Russian Pattern of Altmetrics Usage based on SCI-E Statistics

Abstract

The paper deals with the evaluation of Russian scholarly publications' impact measured by the classical indicator (citation score) and the altmetrics indicators "Usage Count Last 180 days" (U1) and "Usage Count Since 2013" (U2) during the 14 years, 2006-19. We examined research output,citation patterns and usage counts in chemistry, life sciences, mathematics and computer sciences that were indexed in the Science Citation Index -Expanded of the Web of Science (WoS).The value of citation score and altimetric indicators (U2 and U1) were dated on July 27, 2020. We compared the mean numbers of Total Citations (TC) to papers from different years with their usage counts in the WoS. U1 shows the numbers of usages in the last 180 days, and U2 gives the count since 2013. Our results of citation score indicator and usage counts U2 indicator demonstrate a similar trend in both with time since 2013 in all subject areas except mathematics. Usage counts (U2) are mostly higher than TC for recent years. This suggests that this altmetric indicator could attract attention to a publication at least a year before it could draw a significant number of citations. This indicator is now being used by many members of the Russian science community as an essential science indicator. U2 and TC do not contradict each other, but they do measure different behaviors.