Awareness and usage of altmetrics: A user survey

As the way of evaluating research outputs has gradually changed, and the dissemination of scholarly materials online has gotten easier, research studies investigating the awareness and usage of social media in academia have also been on the rise. The number of user surveys on the awareness and usage of altmetrics (emerging alternative metrics based on social media) has, however, remained low. This paper presents the findings of an online survey, which are the results of the first phase data collection of a user survey on the awareness and usage of altmetrics in academia. Our findings show that article views and downloads from online digital libraries or repositories are very well-known. The most used altmetrics are mentions and shares on social networks. Mentions in blog posts and topics in a forum are also popular altmetrics. Interestingly, this study reveals a tendency for non-faculty staff to be more aware of altmetrics. Furthermore, we also investigate how the usage of social media correlates with the usage of altmetrics. The findings show medium to large correlations between the usage of social media and the usage of altmetrics, which means academics who use social media often, also tend to use altmetrics often.