The Relationship Between Institutional Factors, Citation and Altmetric Counts of Publications from Finnish Universities

Abstract

The goals of this research were two-fold. First, this research set out to investigate possible institutional characteristics that may or may not have an influence on online attention or, in other words, the number of altmetric events surrounding the scientific articles from that institution. The results suggest that international connections are important in the accumulation of altmetric events, possibly due to the creation of weak ties between researchers and their institutions. Second, it was studied whether the institutional research profile, i.e. in what fields the institution published, matched with the distribution of altmetric events across the same fields of science. Our analysis shows that the universities’ research profiles are not always reflected in the online events. Overall, the results of both goals of this research reflect a complex system where the received online attention can be attributed to many different factors.