Page 187 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

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

Evaluation of academic papers impact based on altmetrics:A case study of
chinese language and literature
①a *
ZHAO Rongying,GUO Fengjiao & TAN Jie

Traditional evaluation of academic papers impact is done by analyzing the phenomenon of paper
citations. With the development of web 2.0,the online communication is used by more and more
researchers to acquire,spread and share research achievements. Altmetrics was born under this
background. In this paper,evaluation model based on Altmetrics was constructed to evaluate the
influence of academic papers. We hope that it not only overcomes the shortcomings of traditional
evaluation methods,but also evaluates the academic papers impact more comprehensively and
scientifically by combining with the characteristics of the academic exchanges in the network
environment.
In this paper,problems existing in the current study of Altmetrics evaluation indicators
were first summarized. Secondly,aiming at the shortcomings and deficiencies of related
research,an evaluation model flowchart of academic papers impact based on Altmetrics was
constructed,combining with the existing evaluation indicators. Then,all the relevant journal
articles about Chinese Language and Literature published in 2012 from Mendeley were selected
as the sample documents. Altmetrics Explore and SPSS were used to acquire,analyze and process
the data. Synthetically using the correlation analysis and principal component analysis,we
quantitatively analyzed and selected evaluation indicators from the existing indicators. Indicators
were determined by factor analysis and weights were assigned according to the score coefficient
matrix of each principal component. Empirical studies had shown the feasibility and rationality of
the evaluation model.
By the comparative analysis with the traditional citation indicators,we find that Altmetrics
indicators have consistency in the evaluation results with the citations and h-index,but there
are still some differences. Altmetrics evaluation indicators are mainly used to measure the
controlled readership of academic papers,the depth of social communication of traditional media
and interactions produced by recommendations,comments,etc.It is in favor of social influence
and social attention,and less involved in academic impact. Therefore,evaluation of academic
papers’ impact based on Altmetrics is a complement to traditional evaluation based on citation
indicators,and cannot completely replace the traditional evaluation methods.
The feasibility and rationality of the evaluation model based on Altmetrics were verified in
this article. A comprehensive model uniting Altmetrics indicators and citation indicators can
both measure the social influence and academic impact of academic papers. We look forward
to selecting more rational Altmetrics indicators and citation indicators to design a better
comprehensive evaluation model,making the evaluation of academic papers impact more

* Correspondence should be addressed to GUO Fengjiao,Email:happyguofj@126.com,ORCID:0000-0002-2902-8299