Are Altmetrics Proxies or Complements to Citations for Assessing Impact in Computer Science?

Abstract

Altmetrics represent an alternative to established citation-based metrics to measure the scientific impact of a publication. For instance, they cover social-media platforms (e.g., Twitter, YouTube) to elicit how individuals outside of the scientific community interact with publications. Still, it is somewhat unclear to what extent Altmetrics are a valuable addition to existing metrics, or may represent only proxies without additional value. In this paper, we present our current steps towards understanding this problem in more detail. To this end, we describe and discuss the results of an initial correlation study that revealed significant positive correlations of different strengths between four categories of Altmetrics and citations. We elaborate on potential causes for, and the impact of, these correlations to define steps for future research aimed at understanding the value of Altrnetrics.