Social media and altmetrics

Abstract

Scholars use a wide range of the traditional and academic social media to connect with others, gain feedback from peers, and disseminate research more broadly. On the flip side, altmetrics data can help understand how researchers interact with research and the extent of the uptake of major social media platforms among the academic community. This chapter uses such data and presents it in three main parts. The first provides a brief overview of the literature on social media and presents some of the factors that influence social media adoption among academics, including differences in career stage, discipline, and geography. The second provides a brief overview of indicators in social science with a focus on traditional social networking sites, academic social networking sites, and blogs. The third section uses altmetric data about social science documents to analyze the circulation of research from different sub-disciplines from the Social Sciences.