Bibliometrics, altmetrics, and webometrics are all methods used to measure the impact and influence of academic or scholarly works, but they focus on different aspects and sources of data. Here's a breakdown of each:
1. Bibliometrics
- Definition: Bibliometrics refers to the quantitative analysis of academic publications and citations. It uses statistical methods to assess the impact, productivity, and development of scientific research over time.
- Key Focus:
- Citation analysis: How often a paper or author is cited by others.
- Journal impact factor (IF): A measure of the importance of a journal based on citations.
- H-index: A metric to assess an individual researcher's productivity and citation impact.
- Common Metrics: Citation counts, journal impact factors, h-index, g-index.
- Sources: Academic databases like Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar.
2. Altmetrics
- Definition: Altmetrics (alternative metrics) measure the impact and engagement of academic work in non-traditional outlets, including social media, blogs, news media, policy documents, and other online platforms.
- Key Focus:
- Social media mentions (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
- Shares, downloads, and views of publications on academic platforms like ResearchGate or Academia.edu.
- Blog posts, mainstream media coverage, or online discussions.
- Common Metrics: Tweets, Facebook shares, news articles, online mentions, downloads.
- Sources: Social media platforms, blogs, news websites, online repositories like Mendeley.
3. Webometrics
- Definition: Webometrics (or cybermetrics) focuses on measuring the web presence and impact of scholarly institutions (universities, research centers), journals, and other academic entities based on their online activities and visibility.
- Key Focus:
- The online presence of academic institutions, including their websites, repositories, and research publications.
- Website traffic, link structure, and academic content available on the web.
- Common Metrics: Number of links pointing to a site, website traffic, external visibility, page rank.
- Sources: Institutional websites, online repositories, citation databases, web crawlers.
Key Differences:
- Bibliometrics focuses on traditional, citation-based measures of academic influence.
- Altmetrics captures the broader, non-academic impact and attention on digital platforms.
- Webometrics analyzes the online visibility and impact of academic institutions or their content on the web.
Conclusion:
- Bibliometrics is based on formal citation data,
- Altmetrics focuses on social media and online engagement, and
- Webometrics looks at the digital footprint of institutions or research entities.