Analysing the Altmetric scores of articles from the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

Tags: Poster
Stewart G1, Ruotsalainen J2
1Wiley, United Kingdom, 2Cochrane Occupational Safety and Health Review Group, Finland

Background: In 2014, Wiley partnered with Altmetric; a company that compiles article-level metrics. Altmetric provides an alternative to the more traditional ways of measuring the impact of scholarly work, by tracking data derived from online activity and discussions about individual scholarly papers collectively known by Altmetric as ‘mentions’. Cochrane Reviews are given an Altmetric score based on the number of mentions they receive.

Wiley use traditional metrics to provide an annual ‘Impact and usage’ report to every Cochrane Review Group (CRG) with the aim of assisting groups in showing the impact of their published reviews. The report does not currently include Altmetric data and the use of Altmetric data within Cochrane is not widespread.

Objectives: To analyse Altmetric data and establish whether more widespread use of the data would be beneficial for CRGs and Cochrane authors.

Methods: An analysis of the number of mentions received by all published Cochrane articles and a more detailed analysis of mentions received by articles published by the Cochrane Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Group will be undertaken. The online submission system, Archie, will be used to export the publication details of all published Cochrane articles. The Altmetric Explorer platform will be used to export the number of mentions associated with all published Cochrane articles and to analyse the nature of mentions received by articles from the OSH group.

Results: To date, 6040 Cochrane articles have received an Altmetric score; 34 of these articles were published by the OSH group. The results will show how CRGs compare by score and weighting of mentions. Activity associated with articles published by the OSH group will be analysed additionally by demographics and source.

Conclusions: Conclusions will be drawn and presented from the analysis.