Altmetrics as a tool for assessing the significance of scientific research in the information age

Abstract

Alternative metrics for scientific publications are increasingly used as a measure of their impact. Therefore, it is important to assess how suitable altmetrics are for this purpose and to determine whether the advantage in metrics for open access articles truly signifies a wider dissemination of research results beyond the academic community. The characteristics of 94 articles published in leading international journals on media and communication were analyzed. The analysis results showed that at this stage, altmetrics can only be used as a supplementary tool, and open access actually has little effect on the breadth of dissemination of scientific information.