Measure of Scientific Impact: How Altmetrics Can Innovate the Approach in a Multidimensional Model

Abstract

With the development of the web 2.0 social media era and the rapid increase of open access journals, novel alternative analytic metrics, known as altmetrics, have emerged. Altmetrics are not substitutes for traditional bibliometrics; however, they function as complementary additions to assess both impact and influence of a research project on the society (e.g., patients). The goal of this research was to analyze our scientific production and determine how this could help us evaluate our scientific production, research themes, and research with greater impact. Our analysis shows that some research themes had unexpected good altmetric scores compared to traditional citations, and we confirmed a high correlation between altmetric scores and standard bibliometric indexes at the institutional level. Our study shows that altmetrics are mature enough to represent an interesting complement to citation and impact factor.

Keywords

• research impact
• altmetrics
• bibliometrics
• institutional impact
• public and patients’ involvement