Research Evolution in Altmetrics: A Thematic Analysis

Abstract

The study aims to analyse documents published in the field of Altmetrics up to 2023 through the examination of the author’s keywords. According to the Scopus database, 1287 documents were indexed in this field up to 2023. The bibliographic data for these 1287 documents were extracted for analysis using Biblioshiny. A total of 2237 author’s keywords were identified within considered documents. In the field of Altmetrics, aside from the keyword “altmetrics”, the most frequently used keywords are “bibliometrics”, “social media”, and “twitter”. The keyword “altmetrics” was the dominant keyword from 2017 to 2021; prior to that, the keyword “article-level metrics” was the most commonly used in the document. In recent years (2022 and 2023), the terms “covid-19” and “public policy” were found to be the most commonly used keywords. The thematic analysis unveiled the basic themes in three clusters: “altmetrics”, “social media”, and “Research Gate”. The result also uncovered the niche themes “altmetric indicators” and “usage statistics”. The thematic evolution over the years indicated that the articles published between 2016 and 2019 had a lot of variation in themes. Five themes from the first period and seven themes from the second period converged into the main theme altmetrics. The study would be helpful for the researchers to understand the evolution of themes over the years and identify the core and specialised areas in the field of Altmetrics.