The two most cited papers came from our own department, the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), in the field of health economics. Only two of the 14 most cited publications were in a field other than health economics or pure economics, both of which were in environmental studies. In total, the 14 most cited research outputs were cited by 175 policy documents, but we identified 9% (16) of these as duplicates. Of those 175 citations we found that 61% (107) were national, i.e. from the UK, and 39% (68) were international, i.e. from countries other than the UK or from international bodies such as the United Nations or World Health Organization.
Altmetric.com continues to add further policy sources to its database to trawl for citations. As a result, it should follow that our sample of 1463 research outputs will not only grow with more fresh policy citations, but as older research citations are identified through new policy sources of attention. This work also highlights the importance of research outputs having unique identifiers so they can be tracked through altmetric platforms; it is certain that more of our research will be cited in policy, but if no unique identifier is attached, especially to older outputs, it is unlikely the Altmetric.com system will pick it up.
Altmetric.com is a very useful indicator of interest in and influence of research within global policy. Yet there are clearly problems with the quality of the data and how it is attributed to subsequent Altmetric.com data. We found one third of our sample of the 21 most cited research outputs had been erroneously attributed to an institution or author. Whether this is representative of the whole dataset only further studies will find out. It is essential that any future explorations of research outputs and policy document citations be double-checked and not taken on face value.
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This is an edited version of a post that originally appeared on the LSE Impact Blog http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2018/02/12/analysing-altmetric-data-on-research-citations-in-policy-literature-the-case-of-the-university-of-sheffield/
Andy Tattersall is an Information Specialist at ScHARR Information Resources and Dr Chris Carroll is based at ScHARR Health Economics and Decision Science at the University of Sheffield, UK.