Page 219 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2015 Vol. 41

Extended English abstracts of articles published in the Chinese Edition of
Journal of Library Science in China

2015 Vol.41

No.1

Some basic problems in advancing the development of altmetrics

Junping QIU & Houqiang YU 1 ∗

With systematic survey, induction and analysis of altmetrics literature, the study aimed to answer
the following three questions: 1) What does altmetrics study? What is it alternative for? 2) What is
the relationship between altmetrics indicators and traditional citation-based indicators? And why?
3) Are altmetrics indicators valid? Are altmetrics indicators vulnerable and easy to manipulate
because they are based on online data?
Results showed that the meaning of altmetrics evolved through three stages. In the first stage,
the proposer of the term altmetrics made the initial definition. Altmetrics was deemed to possess
the potential of replacing the traditional citation-based literature filter mechanism and scientific
evaluation mechanism. It is defined as“the creation and study of new metrics based on the Social
Web for analyzing, and informing scholarship”. In the second stage, researchers had defined
altmetrics in various ways. To sum up, these definitions are different in the coverage. The most
manifest definition is that“altmetrics is social media metrics”, and the most general definition is
that“altmetrics combined traditional bibliometrics indicators and novel online indicators to give
alternative solution for measuring the complete impact of academic products”. In the third stage,
altmetrics research community had come to agreement. Altmetrics in the broad sense emphasizes
the change of research perspective, and aims to replace the quantitative scientific evaluation system
relying solely on traditional citation-based indicators with the evaluation system of full impact
oriented to academic products, and simultaneously advance the development of open science
and online scientific communication. Altmetrics in the narrow sense specifically studies novel
online indicators and their application compared to traditional citation-based indicators, especially
indicators based on social media data.
The meanings of altmetrics indicators are gradually being revealed. 1) Studies showed that certain
types of the altmetrics indicators cannot reflect academic impact. Altmetrics indicators reflect
* Correspondence should be addressed to Houqiang YU, Email: yuhouq@yeah.net