Assessing Research Impact in Library and Information Studies: A Correlational Study of Altmetric Attention Scores and Scholarly Citations

Abstract

The current research examined the top 100 Library and Information Studies (LIS) articles to assess their altmetric and citation-based impact. The srudy selected Library and Information Studies as the research category from Dimensions.ai database for data collection. The results were refined by limiting the publication period to 2015–2024 and restricting the publication type to articles. From this dataset, the top 100 articles with the highest Altmetric Attention Scores (AAS) were chosen for detailed analysis. The researchers used OpenRefine to clean and process the data, while Microsoft Excel enabled them to create tables and charts and conduct correlation analysis. The study results show that X (formerly Twitter) served as the primary social media platform to which users linked their AAS scores. Furthermore, AAS showed a very strong positive correlation with X (r = 0.97) and Bluesky (r = 0.81). The year-by-year analysis shows that 2018 produced the highest output, which resulted in 18 articles entering the top 100 list. However, AAS demonstrated only weak correlations with traditional scholarly impact indicators, including Dimensions citations, Relative Citation Ratio (RCR), and Field Citation Ratio (FCR).