Social Signals Reflect Academic Impact: What it Means When a Scholar Adds a Paper to Mendeley

Abstract

“The notion that the impact factor can encapsulate the value of everything a scholar produces is a bit simplistic.” Todd Carpenter, Executive Director, National Information Standards Organization[1] The academic social network Mendeley[2] has emerged as one of the most interesting sources of altmetrics. With a community of 2.4 million academics who have uploaded over 420 million documents across every discipline from life science to math to the arts and humanities, Mendeley is making it possible for academics, institutions, and funding organizations to really see the true picture of the impact of their research, not just on their field, but on all the stakeholders in research.