Bibliometric and Altmetric Analysis of Three Social Science Disciplines

Abstract

This article analyses scientific publications of international prestige in three social science disciplines (communication, economics, and sociology) to identify possible production patterns. Emphasis is placed on the study of impact and visibility, both through bibliometric and altmetric indicators to determine similarities and differences and to establish possible inter-variable relationships. The use of measures such as the presence in social media for the study of the visibility of documents is discussed. A total of 112,300 papers published from 2013 to 2015 in the three disciplines analyzed was retrieved from the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). Economics accounted for the largest number and was observed to have a "stable" and consolidated output profile. Collaboration, impact, and visibility were found to be inter-related in the three fields. The proportion of papers with mentions in the social media was high (around 50%) in communication and sociology, suggesting a relationship between the object of study and the medium for disseminating the findings. Tweets were the most common type of mentions. While the correlation between academic impact (citation/doc) and mentions in blog posts and tweets was observed to be low, the percentage of papers cited (78 to 96%) and the mean number of citations per paper were greater among those with than those without mentions in the social media (especially those mentioned in Google+, MSM, videos, and Wikipedia). The proportion of open access (OA) papers with mentions in the social media was higher than the percentage of open access papers as a whole in two of the three disciplines.

Communication on Sustainability in Spanish Universities: Analysis of Websites, Scientific Papers and Impact in Social Media

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Journal article publishing in the social sciences and humanities: A comparison of Web of Science coverage for five European countries

“…It may be useful to take into consideration not only differences and developments in article coverage between STM and the SSH, but also between individual SSH disciplines or clusters of disciplines when applying bibliometrics and determining methods for assessing research impact in evaluation systems. Such considerations correspond with De Filippo and Sanz-Casado’s [ 37 ] findings for three social science disciplines based on an analysis of publication activity, collaboration, impact, and visibility using both traditional and alternative metrics.…”

Scientific Landscape of Citizen Science Publications: Dynamics, Content and Presence in Social Media

“…Today many content sharing sites such as fora, blogs and social networks (including Facebook and Twitter) have not only proven very popular among the public at large, but have also seduced members of the scientific community, giving rise to the so-called "academic social web". This new space enables researchers to share and validate their projects through tools tailored to academia, such as reference management software (Mendeley, CiteULike), professional networks (ResearchGate, ScienceOpen) and digital identity applications (Web of Science's ResearcherID or ORCID) [31].…”