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168 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol. 8, 2016

has covered the most articles (72.8%). Publisher classification system covered the second most
articles (68.7%). And Medline classification system covered the least articles (only 59.5%). 21.3%
articles have none of these classification systems. These non-schema articles were mainly from
open access platforms or journals such as arXiv, SSRN, IEEE and so on, and also from other small
scale publishers. These articles may have disciplinary classification on their own platform but
not indexed by the three major classification system provider, and thus not in the scope of data
collection by Altmetric.com.
Publisher subject S p mainly consists of classification system adopted by ERA (European
Research Area), NPG(Nature Publishing Group) and Springer. Amidst the covered Weiboed
articles, ERA articles took up 76.63%, NPG articles took up 17.52% and Springer articles took up
6.85%. Each of these three giant publishers had their own disciplinary classification system. ERA
had 155 types of disciplines in the classification system. Sprinter had 250 types of disciplines in
the classification system. And NPG even had 882 types of subjects according to the Altmetric.
com data. These subjects were found to be more like keywords rather than subjects. Due to the
heterogeneous nature of S s , publisher subject would be used for reference. Scopus subject was
the most systematic and of highest coverage disciplinary classification system. We adopted as
baseline for analyzing disciplinary differences of Weibo altmetrics indicator. Scopus, based on
the characteristics of disciplines, initially classified disciplines into 27 general disciplines and
over 300 small disciplines. Later, Scopus slightly modified the classification system taking
into consideration practical service experience. The current classification system consists of 31
general disciplines and 445 small disciplines. Altmetric.com, however, used only the 31 general
disciplines. Medline subject provided detailed disciplines of general medical science and used
96 disciplines. S m will provide insight to further analyze disciplinary distribution of medical
field. A good combination of these three classification systems can reveal clearly the disciplinary
distribution of Weiboed articles. Disciplinary distribution based on is shown in Figure 5.
From Figure 5, we see most frequently Weiboed articles are from “General” discipline (20.49%)
which means that interdisciplinary content gains most attention from Weibo. “Biochemistry,
Genetics and Molecular Biology” (14.37%) ranked the second position. Then it’s followed by
“Health sciences” (13.44%) and “Medicine” (13.24%) that got the third and fourth position
respectively and of similar level. The next is “Life Sciences” that ranked the fifth position. These
five disciplines were the most frequently Weiboed disciplines. Each of them had the percentage
over 10% and together occupied 72.33% of all Weiboed articles. The following disciplines were
“Social Sciences” (6.42%), “Physical Sciences” (4.23%), “Neuroscience” (2.17%), “Psychology”
(1.83%), “Economics, Econometrics and Finance” (1.74%), “Agricultural and Biological Sciences”
(1.53%) and “Physics and Astronomy” (1.20%). These 7 disciplines had the percentage over 1%
and together occupied 19.12% of all Weiboed articles. The remnant 19 disciplines occupied the
remaining 8.55% of all the Weiboed articles.