Using altmetrics for assessing research impact in the humanities

Abstract

The prospects of altmetrics are especially encouraging for research fields in the humanities that currently are difficult to study using established bibliometric methods. Yet, little is known about the altmetric impact of research fields in the humanities. Consequently, this paper analyses the altmetric coverage and impact of humanities-oriented articles and books published by Swedish universities during 2012. Some of the most common altmetric sources are examined using a sample of 310 journal articles and 54 books. Mendeley has the highest coverage of journal articles (61 %) followed by Twitter (21 %) while very few of the publications are mentioned in blogs or on Facebook. Books, on the other hand, are quite often tweeted while both Mendeley's and the novel data source Library Thing's coverage is low. Many of the problems of applying bibliometrics to the humanities are also relevant for altmetric approaches; the importance of non-journal publications, the reliance on print as well the limited coverage of non-English language publications. However, the continuing development and diversification of methods suggests that altmetrics could evolve into a valuable tool for assessing research in the humanities.

Different views on Digital Scholarship: separate worlds or cohesive research field?

“…The parameter 'minimum number of citation links' was set at 3, which means that documents receiving less than three citations from other documents of the sample are not visualised in the map. This is a low value in typical bibliometric problems, but adequate for this small set of documents; in any case, the situation observed is typical of very specific research fields, as well as of the application of bibliometric indicators in the Humanities and in Educational Research (Hammarfelt 2014).…”

Preprint for the Humanities - Fiction or a real possibility?

“…To do this we should move beyond the heterogeneous collection of disciplines gathered under the label of the humanities Hammarfelt (2014). For practical reasons we will limit the discussion to the field of philosophy, although most of the arguments are applicable to other fields within the humanities as well.…”

Scholarly social media profiles and libraries

“…For all the reluctance on behalf of scientists, networks proliferate (Mangan, 2012), tools have a potential to measure research impact (Haustein & Siebenlist, 2011), and scholarly social media have been reviewed extensively (Bik & Goldstein, 2013;Ortega, 2015). Different fields of science are reported to use social media in academia such as biology (Crawford, 2011), technology, engineering, and mathematics (Galloway, Pease, & Rauh, 2013;Giglia, 2011), and humanities (Hammarfelt, 2014). Researchers are inundated with introductions as well as detailed guidelines about how to use social media in general (e.g., Goodier & Czerniewicz, 2012;Gruzd, 2012), how to benefit the most from engaging in social media (Bik & Goldstein, 2013), and how social media can enhance their visibility (Bar-Ilan et al, 2012;Giglia, 2011;Goodier & Czerniewicz, 2012).…”