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Identifying science in the news: An assessment of the precision and recall of Altmetric.com news mention data

Author

Listed:
  • Alice Fleerackers

    (Simon Fraser University)

  • Lise Nehring

    (University of Victoria)

  • Lauren A. Maggio

    (Uniformed Services University)

  • Asura Enkhbayar

    (Simon Fraser University)

  • Laura Moorhead

    (San Francisco State University)

  • Juan Pablo Alperin

    (Simon Fraser University)

Abstract

The company Altmetric is often used to collect mentions of research in online news stories, yet there have been concerns about the quality of this data. This study investigates these concerns. Using a manual content analysis of 400 news stories as a comparison method, we analyzed the precision and recall with which Altmetric identified mentions of research in 8 news outlets. We also used logistic regression to identify the characteristics of research mentions that influence their likelihood of being successfully identified. We find that, for a predefined set of outlets, Altmetric’s news mention data were relatively accurate (F-score = 0.80), with very high precision (0.95) and acceptable recall (0.70), although recall is below 0.50 for some news outlets. Altmetric is more likely to successfully identify mentions of research that include a hyperlink to the research item, an author name, and/or the title of a publication venue. This data source appears to be less reliable for mentions of research that provide little or no bibliometric information, as well as for identifying mentions of scholarly monographs, conference presentations, dissertations, and non-English research articles. Our findings suggest that, with caveats, scholars can use Altmetric news mention data as a relatively reliable source to identify research mentions across a range of outlets with high precision and acceptable recall, offering scholars the potential to conserve resources during data collection. Our study does not, however, offer an assessment of completeness or accuracy of Altmetric news data overall.

Suggested Citation

  • Alice Fleerackers & Lise Nehring & Lauren A. Maggio & Asura Enkhbayar & Laura Moorhead & Juan Pablo Alperin, 2022. "Identifying science in the news: An assessment of the precision and recall of Altmetric.com news mention data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(11), pages 6109-6123, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:11:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04510-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04510-7
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Mousumi Karmakar & Sumit Kumar Banshal & Vivek Kumar Singh, 2021. "A large-scale comparison of coverage and mentions captured by the two altmetric aggregators: Altmetric.com and PlumX," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(5), pages 4465-4489, May.
    2. Diana Hicks, 2005. "The Four Literatures Of Social Sciences," IBT Journal of Business Studies (JBS), Ilma University, Faculty of Management Science, vol. 1(1), pages 1-1.
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    6. Diana Hicks, 2005. "The Four Literatures Of Social Sciences," IBT Journal of Business Studies (JBS), Ilma University, Faculty of Management Science, vol. 1(1), pages 1-20.
    7. Ortega, José Luis, 2021. "How do media mention research papers? Structural analysis of blogs and news networks using citation coupling," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
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