Presentation given to the Northern Alberta Health Libraries Association (NAHLA) Trends Mini Conference in Edmonton at the University of Alberta on May 2, 2014

1. Robin Featherstone, MLIS
Research Librarian,
Alberta Research Centre for Health Evidence,
Department of Pediatrics, University of Alberta
@rmfeatherstone
http://www.slideshare.net/featherr
Tweet your pubs: How altmetrics
are changing the way we measure
research impact
http://www.ualberta.ca/ARCHE/
@arche4evidence
Spring 2014

2. Conflict of interest disclosure
• I have had free access to the Altmetric.com
Explorer since September 2013

3. Image by Nik Papageorgiou: http://theupturnedmicroscope.com

4. Altmetrics…
[…] capture ways in which articles are
disseminated throughout the expanding
scholarly ecosystem, and reach beyond the
scope of traditional trackers and filters.
[…] measure research impact by including
references outside of traditional scholarly
publishing.
3. Public Library of Science (PLOS). Altmetrics. [29 April 2014].
Available from http://article-level-metrics.plos.org/alt-metrics/
4. Baynes G. Scientometrics, bibliometrics, altmetrics: Some introductory advice for the lost and
bemused. Insights. 2012;25(3):311-5. doi: 10.1629/2048-7754.25.3.311.

5. Altmetric tools measure
• Tweets
• Blog mentions
• Facebook posts
• Presentations
• News articles
• Shared citations (e.g., Mendeley, CiteULike)
• Data uploads
• Etc.

6. What’s your impact1?
1. Emerald Group Publishing. Impact of Research [11 April 2014].
Available from: http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/authors/impact/index.htm
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/07/14/publishers-measuring-impact/

7. Agenda
• Researcher & article case studies
• Altmetric products
• Measurable mentions & unique IDs
• Gaming the system
• Altmetric research
• Altmetrics for biomedical and health sciences
• Future directions

8. Researcher case study –
Heather Piwowar
• h-index: 8
– 23 articles cited 258 times
http://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.url?authorId=25122628200

9. Researcher Case Study –
Heather Piwowar
• Slideshare followers: 85
http://www.slideshare.net/hpiwowar
• ImpactStory research products: 117
http://impactstory.org/HeatherPiwowar
• Figshare views: 1384
http://figshare.com/authors/Heather_Piwowar/96399
• GitHub contributions: 1410
https://github.com/hpiwowar
• Google Scholar h-index: 13 (51 publications cited 678
times)
http://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=1YLq0XMAAAAJ&hl=en
• ResearchGate score: 14.33
• Research Gate Impact Points: 50.29
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Heather_Piwowar2

10. Article Case Study –
Marshall 2013
• Web of Science times cited: 1
• Google Scholar times cited: 21
• Scopus times cited: 6

11. Article Case Study –
Marshall 2013
• Altmetric score: 76

12. Altmetrics Players

18. Measurable Mentions
A. Great article in Oncology by Kotsori!
B. Great article in Oncology by @akotsori -
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21430400
C. Great article in @oncologyjournal by @akotsori
#breastcancer - http://1.usa.gov/1ltIu25

19. What is gaming?
• Alice has a new paper out. She asks those grad
students of hers who blog to write about it.
• Alice has a new paper out. She believes that it
contains important information for diabetes patients
and so signs up to a ’100 retweets for $$$’ service.
5. Case examples from: Adie, E. Gaming Altmetrics. [29 April 2014].
Available from http://www.altmetric.com/blog/gaming-altmetrics/

20. Auto-spamming

21. Spectrum of social media self-
promotion
6. Adie, E. Gaming Altmetrics. [29 April 2014].
Available from http://www.altmetric.com/blog/gaming-altmetrics/

22. Altmetrics research
• PLOS Altmetrics Collection:
http://www.ploscollections.org/altmetrics
• Many studies compared altmetrics with
citation counts and Impact Factors
• Positive but weak correlations found

23. Altmetrics in the health sciences
• ‘Biomedical and health sciences’ showed
highest share of publications with
Altmetric.com scores7
• Increasing numbers of PubMed citations were
being tweeted8
2010 2.4%
2011 10.9%
2012 20.4%
7. Costas R, Zahedi Z, Wouters P. Do altmetrics correlate with citations? Extensive comparison of
altmetric indicators with citations from a multidisciplinary perspective. arXiv preprint arXiv:14014321.
2014.
8. Haustein S, Peters I, Sugimoto CR, Thelwall M, Larivière V. Tweeting biomedicine: An analysis of
tweets and citations in the biomedical literature. Journal of the Association for Information Science
and Technology. 2013.

24. Social Media and health
• Used for:
– Health promotion9, 10
– Education11
– Communication and knowledge sharing12
9. Williams G, Hamm MP, Shulhan J, Vandermeer B, Hartling L. Social media interventions for diet and
exercise behaviours: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. BMJ Open.
2014;4(2). doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2013-003926.
10. Hamm MP, Chisholm A, Shulhan J, Milne A, Scott SD, Given LM, et al. Social media use among
patients and caregivers: a scoping review. BMJ Open. 2013;3(5). doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2013-002819.
11. Hamm MP, Klassen TP, Scott SD, Moher D, Hartling L. Education in Health Research Methodology:
Use of a Wiki for Knowledge Translation. PLoS ONE. 2013;8(5):e64922. doi:
10.1371/journal.pone.0064922.
12. Hamm MP, Chisholm A, Shulhan J, Milne A, Scott SD, Klassen TP, et al. Social media use by health
care professionals and trainees: a scoping review. Academic medicine : journal of the Association of
American Medical Colleges. 2013;88(9):1376-83. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e31829eb91c.

25. Rank Score Article Title Year Journal
1 1350 Early Television Exposure and
Subsequent Attentional Problems in
Children
2004 Pediatrics
2 558 Do Television and Electronic Games
Predict Children’s Psychosocial
Adjustment? Longitudinal Research
Using the UK Millennium Cohort
Study
2013 Archives of
Disease in
Childhood
3 521 Microbial Contamination of Human
Milk Purchased via the Internet
2013 Pediatrics
4 457 Effective Messages in Vaccine
Promotion: A Randomized Trial
2014 Pediatrics
5 383 Gun Violence Trends in Movies 2013 Pediatrics
Using Altmetrics.com rankings
– Pediatric Journals

27. Using Altmetrics.com rankings
- ARCHE publications
Rank Score Article Title Journal Notes
1 152 How confidence
intervals become
confusion intervals
BMC Medical
Research
Methodology
One of the highest ever
scores in this journal (ranked
#1 of 364) – article was
mentioned by 219 tweeters
2 148 Lifestyle Interventions
for Patients With and at
Risk for Type 2
Diabetes: A Systematic
Review and Meta-
analysis
Annals of Internal
Medicine
Among the highest ever
scored in this journal
(ranked #37 of 2470) –
article was mentioned by
128 tweeters
3 122 Social media use among
patients and caregivers:
a scoping review
BMJ Open Among the highest ever
scored in this journal
(ranked #22 of 1501) –
article was mentioned by
150 tweeters

29. Future Directions –
Publisher-driven altmetrics

30. Future Directions –
Product development
• Increase transparency of self-promotion
activites
• Implement anti-spamming/anti-gaming
software solutions

31. Future Directions –
Standards development

32. Future Directions – Research
• Is there a correlation between altmetrics
rankings and…
– full-text downloads?
– qualitative measures of interest?
– …

33. Future Directions - Assessment
• Will be used by:
– funding agencies
– research centres
– libraries
– Knowledge Translation (KT) researchers

34. Future Directions

35. The Alberta Research Centre for Health Evidence
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Robin Featherstone, MLIS
@rmfeatherstone
feathers@ualberta.ca
Slides available: http://www.slideshare.net/featherr