Altmetrics in Social Sciences and Humanities in Mexico: conditions, opportunities and challenges
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54167/rei.v4i1.2268Keywords:
academic visibility, altmetrics, bibliometrics, scientific communication, social sciences, AnimeAbstract
This manuscript examines altmetrics as a complementary approach to traditional bibliometrics for understanding contemporary forms of circulation, appropriation, and visibility of scholarly output in digital environments, with a focus on the Social Sciences and Humanities. Drawing on a critical review of recent literature, it analyzes its conceptual foundations, major methodological debates, and interpretive limitations, particularly regarding geographic and linguistic biases and infrastructural dependencies. It argues that altmetrics do not replace citations but provide early, heterogeneous, and context-sensitive signals that help reconstruct trajectories of social and media reach that traditional metrics capture with delay. The paper also discusses digital platforms as infrastructures of scholarly attention and proposes a diagnosis of the Mexican case based on enabling conditions rather than full institutionalization. It contends that the expansion of open access, regional indexing, and digital scholarly communication create a favorable context for altmetric development, even though their formal integration into research evaluation and management frameworks remains limited. The manuscript concludes by advocating for a critical, situated, and methodologically responsible use of altmetrics as a complementary tool in scholarly communication.
Downloads
References
Alperin, J. P. (2015). Geographic variation in social media metrics: An analysis of Latin American journal articles. Aslib Journal of Information Management, 67(3), 289–304. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-12-2014-0176
Arroyo-Machado, W., y Torres-Salinas, D. (2023). Evaluative altmetrics: Is there evidence for its application to research evaluation? Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics, 8, 1188131. https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2023.1188131
Barata, G. (2019). Por métricas alternativas mais relevantes para a América Latina. Transinformação, 31, e190031. https://doi.org/10.1590/2318-0889201931e190031
Barata, G., Shores, K., y Alperin, J. P. (2018). Local chatter or international buzz? Language differences on posts about Zika research on Twitter and Facebook. PLOS ONE, 13(1), e0190482. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0190482
Bornmann, L. (2014). Do altmetrics point to the broader impact of research? An overview of benefits and disadvantages of altmetrics. Journal of Informetrics, 8(4), 895–903. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2014.09.005
Gobierno de México. (2026). Planeas: Un capítulo del Ecosistema Nacional Informático de Energía y Cambio Climático. https://energia.conahcyt.mx/planeas/
Costas, R., Zahedi, Z., y Wouters, P. (2015). Do “altmetrics” correlate with citations? Extensive comparison of altmetric indicators with citations from a multidisciplinary perspective. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(10), 2003–2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23309
De Oliveira, T. M., Barata, G., & Uribe-Tirado, A. (2021). Ten years of altmetrics: A review of Latin America contributions. Journal of Scientometric Research, 10(1s), s102–s114. https://doi.org/10.5530/jscires.10.1s.26
Delgado López-Cózar, E., Orduña-Malea, E., y Martín-Martín, A. (2019). Google Scholar as a data source for research assessment. En W. Glänzel, H. F. Moed, U. Schmoch y M. Thelwall (Eds.), Springer handbook of science and technology indicators (pp. 95–127). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02511-3_4
González, P., Fors, M., y Torres, A. (2025). Altmetrics in the evaluation of scholarly impact: A systematic and critical literature review. Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics, 10, 1693304. https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2025.1693304
Haustein, S., Costas, R., y Larivière, V. (2015). Characterizing social media metrics of scholarly papers: The effect of document properties and collaboration patterns. PLOS ONE, 10(3), e0120495. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120495
Hicks, D., Wouters, P., Waltman, L., De Rijcke, S., y Rafols, I. (2015). Bibliometrics: The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics. Nature, 520, 429–431. https://doi.org/10.1038/520429a
Jarić, I., Pipek, P., y Novoa, A. (2025). A call for broadening the altmetrics tent to democratize science outreach. PLOS Biology, 23(2), e3003010. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003010
Nassi-Calò, L. (2022, 9 de febrero). Cómo se utilizan las altmetrías para evaluar la producción científica en América Latina. SciELO en Perspectiva. https://blog.scielo.org/es/2022/02/09/como-se-utilizan-las-altmetrias-para-evaluar-la-produccion-cientifica-en-america-latina/
Priem, J., Taraborelli, D., Groth, P., y Neylon, C. (2010). Altmetrics: A manifesto. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12684249
Shamsi, A., Lund, B. D., y SeyyedHosseini, S. (2022). Sharing of retracted COVID-19 articles: An altmetric study. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 39(3), 242–250. https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12414
Spatti, A. C., Cintra, P. R., Bin, A., y Araújo, R. F. (2021). Métricas alternativas para avaliação da produção científica latino-americana: Um estudo da rede SciELO. Informação & Informação, 26(2), 596–624. https://doi.org/10.5433/1981-8920.2021v26n2p596
Sugimoto, C. R., Work, S., Larivière, V., y Haustein, S. (2017). Scholarly use of social media and altmetrics: A review of the literature. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 68(9), 2037–2062. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23833
Thelwall, M. (2025). Quantitative methods in research evaluation: Citation indicators, altmetrics, and artificial intelligence. University of Sheffield. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2407.00135
Torres-Salinas, D., Cabezas-Clavijo, Á., y Jiménez-Contreras, E. (2013). Altmetrics: nuevos indicadores para la comunicación científica en la Web 2.0. Comunicar, 21(41), 53–60. https://doi.org/10.3916/C41-2013-05
Vasen, F., y Lujano, I. (2017). Sistemas nacionales de clasificación de revistas científicas en América Latina: Tendencias recientes e implicaciones para la evaluación académica. Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, 62(231), 199–228. https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0185-19182017000300199
Wilsdon, J., Allen, L., Belfiore, E., Campbell, P., Curry, S., Hill, S., Jones, R., Kain, R., Kerridge, S., Thelwall, M., Tinkler, J., Viney, I., Wouters, P., Hill, J., y Johnson, B. (2015). The metric tide: Report of the independent review of the role of metrics in research assessment and management. HEFCE. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.4929.1363
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
How to Cite
-
Abstract401
-
PDF 22
-
EPUB 12
-
HTML 7
