As citation-based research evaluation is increasingly criticized, some alternative or complementary sources of data about research impact are being investigated under the umbrella term altmetrics. The idea with altmetrics is that the mentions and other indicators of awareness and attention (e.g., number of tweets, comments, mentions, blog entries, and social bookmarks) a research article and other research products receive on the web and in social media could tell something about the impact or influence of that research. While citations can only tell something about scientific impact of research, as acknowledged by other researchers, research in general can have multiple audiences and impact far beyond academia. By investigating novel data sources on the web in general and in social media in particular for mentions of research products we can obtain a more nuanced understanding of where and how research has had an impact.
Altmetrics could also point researchers to interesting and more valuable research that have received most attention from other researchers and from the general public. On the other hand, while the open science movement still lacks the incentives for individual researchers to adopt the ideology of the movement, altmetrics could bring some of the lacking incentives by providing novel indicators for attention, visibility and impact. Similarly altmetrics can inform funders, policymakers and other stakeholders of the wider impact of research and give a more nuanced understanding of the impact research has made.
This website is the result of a research project that has investigated the online visibility of Finnish research. By developing methods to investigate altmetrics in the context of Finnish research this project has resulted in a refined understanding of the impact of Finnish research.
The data about Finnish research publications has been downloaded from VIRTA, the database of Finnish Research Publications, and the altmetrics data has been provided by Altmetric LLC, a provider of altmetric services for journals, institutions and individuals.
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