Disciplinary differences of the altmetric impact

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to group altmetric indicators according to their relationships and detect disciplinary differences in a set of 3,793 research articles published in 2013 with regard to their altmetric impact. Three of the most representative altmetric providers (Altmetric, PlumX and CrossRef Event Data (CED)) and Scopus were used to extract information about these publications and their metrics. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to summarize the information of these metrics and detect groups of indicators. Results show that these metrics can be grouped in three components: Social media gathers metrics from social networks and online media, Usage includes metrics on downloads and views, and finally, Citations and saves group metrics related to research impact and saves in bookmarking sites. According to disciplinary differences, articles in General category attract more attention of Social media, Social Sciences indicate higher usage than Physical Sciences and General articles are more cited and saved than Health Sciences and Social Sciences.