Haustein, S. (2015). "Interpreting social media acts. The various meanings of altmetrics" Presentation at #ASIST2015 #SIGMET15 panel "Self-Presentation in Academia Today: From Peer-Reviewed Publications to Social Media" https://www.asist.org/SIG/SIGMET/2015/11/09/panel2015/

1. Interpreting social media acts
The various meanings of altmetrics
Stefanie Haustein @stefhaustein

2. Informetrics, bibliometrics, scientometrics, altmetrics
Björneborn, L. & Ingwersen, P. (2004), Toward a basic framework for webometrics. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(14), 1216–1227.
adaptedfrom:Björneborn&Ingwersen(2004,p.1217)

3. Scholarly metrics
Björneborn, L. & Ingwersen, P. (2004), Toward a basic framework for webometrics. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(14), 1216–1227.
adaptedfrom:Björneborn&Ingwersen(2004,p.1217)
Scholarly metrics
are metrics based
on acts (e.g., viewing,
reading, saving,
diffusing, mentioning,
citing, reusing,
modifying)
related to scholarly
documents (e.g.,
papers, blog posts,
datasets, code, notes)
or scholarly agents
(e.g., researchers,
universities, journals).

4. Framework of acts
Haustein, S., Bowman, T. D., & Costas, R. (2016). Interpreting “altmetrics”: viewing acts on social media through the lens of citation and social theories. In C. R. Sugimoto (Ed.), Theories of
Informetrics and Scholarly Communication. A Festschrift in Honor of Blaise Cronin (pp. 372–405). Berlin: De Gruyter. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05701
RESEARCH OBJECT

5. Interpreting acts
Haustein, S., Bowman, T. D., & Costas, R. (2016). Interpreting “altmetrics”: viewing acts on social media through the lens of citation and social theories. In C. R. Sugimoto (Ed.), Theories of
Informetrics and Scholarly Communication. A Festschrift in Honor of Blaise Cronin (pp. 372–405). Berlin: De Gruyter. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05701
• Normative theory (Merton, 1973)
Researchers behave according to ‘ethos of science’
• Communism
• Universalism
• Social constructivist theory (MacRoberts & MacRoberts, 1989)
• Concept symbols (Small, 1978)
• Social capital (Bourdieu, 1985)
• Attention economics (Davenport & Beck, 2001)
• Impression management (Goffman, 1959)
• Disinterestedness
• Organized skepticism

6. Interpreting acts
• Normative theory
Researchers behave according to ‘ethos of science’
• Communism
• Universalism
 Saving to Mendeley
 Mentioning on Twitter
 Recommending on F1000Prime
 Citing in a blog post
• Disinterestedness
• Organized skepticism

7. Interpreting acts with normative theory
• Saving to Mendeley
• Academic use and users
• Pre-citation context
• Anonymous nature of saving process
• Not all papers are read
• Mentioning on Twitter
• Diverse use and users
• Brevity
• Diffusion rather than discussion
• Humor and entertainment

8. Interpreting acts with normative theory
• Recommending on F1000Prime
• Faculty members are “world’s leading scientists”
• Reviewers “must sign a statement to indicate that the
article has been selected […] entirely on its scientific merit
and […] not been influenced”.
• Citing in a blog post
• Similar to citations in scientific publications
• “The post author should have read and understood the
entire work cited [and] report accurately and thoughtfully
on the research.” (Research Blogging)
• Open and uncontrolled nature

9. Conclusions
• Heterogeneity of
• use
• user populations
• user motivations
• Processes not yet understood
• Biases
• Avoiding adverse effects of metrics

10. Thank you
for your attention!
Stefanie Haustein @stefhaustein