engleski

Can we talk about early impact indicator(s)? Altmetric(s) indicator(s) for the University of Zagreb School of Medicine.

During the first half of 2014 (January 1st till June 30th) authors affiliated to the University of Zagreb, School of Medicine published 390 papers in journals indexed by Scopus. In the same period, Scopus registered citations for 42 of these papers. Citations take time to accumulate, and one has to wait for a few years after publication to see the impact of the papers. Nowadays, scholars are integrating social media tools into their professional communication channels, enabling scientific information to promptly enter the academic community. Altmetric measurements derived from the social web are increasingly advocated and used as early indicators of article impact and usefulness. The results of already published studies indicate that medical and life sciences show the highest presence of altmetrics indicators. Therefore, we decided to analyse the altmetric activity of above mentioned 390 papers. Our results indicate that the presence and density of social media altmetric counts are medium high, with 185 of the publications showing some altmetric activity. We found that the 152 non-cited papers had altmetric(s) indicator(s) even though they were in the process of publishing or recently published. Our analysis confirms that informal communication through social media tools may increase early visibility of new scientific information. The possible impact of these indicators on the course of scientific research, citation and publication process is yet to be determined.

Altmetrics ; impact indicators ; journal articles ; University of Zagreb School of Medicine

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