Meta-Analysis of Associations Between Classic Metric and Altmetric Indicators of Selected LIS Articles

Abstract

Altmetrics or alternative metrics gauge the digital attention received by scientific outputs from the web, which is treated as a supplement to traditional citation metrics. In this study, we performed a meta-analysis of correlations between classic citation metrics and altmetrics indicators of library and information science (LIS) articles. We followed the systematic review method to select the articles and Erasmus Rotterdam Institute of Management Guidelines for reporting the meta-analysis results. To select the articles, keyword searches were conducted on Google Scholar, Scopus, and ResearchGate during the last week of November 2021. Eleven articles were assessed, and eight were subjected to meta-analysis following the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The findings reported negative and positive associations between citations and altmetric indicators among the selected articles, with varying correlation coefficient values from -.189 to 0.93. The result of the meta-analysis reported a pooled correlation coefficient of 0.47 (95% confidence interval, 0.339 to 0.586) for the articles. Sub-group analysis based on the citation source revealed that articles indexed on the Web of Science showed a higher pooled correlation coefficient (0.41) than articles indexed in Google Scholar (0.30). The study concluded that the pooled correlation between citation metrics with altmetric indicators was positive, ranging from low to moderate. The result of the study gives more insights to the scientometrics community to propose and use altmetric indicators as a proxy for traditional citation indicators for quick research impact evaluation of LIS articles.