Publication Performance and Trends in Altmetrics: A Bibliometric Analysis and Visualization

Bibliometric analysis of different fields of knowledge leads to a better understanding of the trend and quality of scientific products. The present study examined the publications on Altmetrics through bibliometric analysis and knowledge mapping. In this survey research, using quantitative indicators of scientometric, scientific developments in the field of altmetrics have been evaluated. The study population included all articles in the field of altmetrics (1077 documents) indexed in the Scopus database from the beginning to the end of 2020. The Excel and VOSviewer software packages were used to analyze the data. The findings show that scientific products in the field of altmetrics indexed in Scopus have been published since 2012; the quantitative trend of publications has been upward; Most of the scientific products in the field of altmetrics were original articles and in English. The United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain were the top and most productive countries in publishing documents in the field. Iran was ranked ninth with 52 documents. Regarding the number of publications, the University of Wolverhampton, the Administrative Headquarters of the Max Planck Society, and Leiden University were ranked first to third, respectively. Thelwall, M., with 42 articles, Bornmann, L., with 32 articles, and Haunschild, R., with 25 articles, were the most active authors. The most frequently used keywords were "Altmetrics", "bibliometrics" and "Social media". The highest number of documents in the field of Altmetrics has been published in the journal "Scientometrics". The most cited author was Thelwall, M., with 2691 citations. Due to the upward trend of scientific publications in Altmetrics and the beginning of its way, this upward trend will continue. Also, most of the top authors in the field are from universities and countries active in this field.