  Altmetrics, indices based on social media platforms and tools, have recently
emerged as alternative means of measuring scholarly impact. Such indices assume
that scholars in fact populate online social environments, and interact with
scholarly products there. We tested this assumption by examining the use and
coverage of social media environments amongst a sample of bibliometricians. As
expected, coverage varied: 82% of articles published by sampled
bibliometricians were included in Mendeley libraries, while only 28% were
included in CiteULike. Mendeley bookmarking was moderately correlated (.45)
with Scopus citation. Over half of respondents asserted that social media tools
were affecting their professional lives, although uptake of online tools varied
widely. 68% of those surveyed had LinkedIn accounts, while Academia.edu,
Mendeley, and ResearchGate each claimed a fifth of respondents. Nearly half of
those responding had Twitter accounts, which they used both personally and
professionally. Surveyed bibliometricians had mixed opinions on altmetrics'
potential; 72% valued download counts, while a third saw potential in tracking
articles' influence in blogs, Wikipedia, reference managers, and social media.
Altogether, these findings suggest that some online tools are seeing
substantial use by bibliometricians, and that they present a potentially
valuable source of impact data.
