The impact of altmetrics on the visibility of open acess Brazilian nursing articles: A case study

Abstract The dissemination and establishment of social media as spaces of interaction, sources of research, and means of production and dissemination of information among scientists, expanded the possibilities of evaluating a scientifi c artifact beyond its citations. In this article, we assess the impact of Mendeley, Facebook, and Twitter on the visibility and number of citations of articles published in Revista Gaúcha de Enfermagem (Rio Grande do Sul Nursing Journal) in a period of ten years (2007-2016). The data providers for the investigation were the CINAHL and Scopus databases. The platform used to collect altmetrics was PlumX. A total of 948 papers published by the journal, 2,150 citations received, 7,072 catches in Mendeley and 359 activities on Twitter and Facebook were analyzed. The results demonstrate the visibility the articles obtained even though they were not mentioned in other works. The visibility of journal articles is evidenced by the small volume of articles that were not cited or mentioned in social media (11.2%). The results showed that non-cited works had an altmetric impact through actions in other academic social media or not. Correlation analyzes may not be adequate as the only method depending on the analyzed period, presenting a false correlation among the publication of the articles, the received citations, and the altmetrics for short periods. Adopting qualitative methods such as Social Network Analysis and content analysis may bring other perspectives to a better understanding of the phenomenon.