Coverage and distribution of altmetric mentions in Spain: a cross-country comparison in 22 research fields

Abstract

Since their formal proposal in 2010, various studies have been carried out on altmetrics from different perspectives and at different levels. However, the problem of the country-specific differences found in such studies has not been addressed in depth and considering the wide range of social media sources. This paper presents a cross-country comparison of altmetric coverage between Spain and a selection of 16 countries (EU-15 and the United States) in 22 research fields. All Spanish publications indexed in Web of Science that were published between 2016 and 2020, as well as all mentions of their altmetrics collected on Altmetric.com, were retrieved. The results show that, of the 434,827 Spanish publications considered, 55% are found on Altmetric.com. General altmetric coverage in Spain is similar to that in the rest of Europe and the United States, but it is in areas such as Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences where the lowest levels of coverage are found, although in the case of the latter the publications receive a higher number of mentions. Spanish publications reach a total of 3,569,553 mentions from different social media platforms, but Twitter is the main source of these mentions, accounting for 89%. Differences between research fields are also found, such as Environment & Ecology receiving a higher number of policy mentions.