An evaluation of Turkey-addressed publication in terms of the altmetric attention scores

The traces left by academic publications on digital platforms can be analyzed with new generation methods. Altmetrics can be used to measure the effects of scientific products in the digital era. Altmetrics are tools that try to measure the impact, attention, or interest for different kinds of scientific products that have an online lifecycle, with the quantitative and qualitative data that they collect. This study aims to outline the big picture of Turkey-addressed publications with altmetric data. In this context, 49,487 such scientific publications with an Altmetric attention score (AAS) greater than one, published between 1953-2021, were evaluated according to their types, dates, AAS, and Altmetric.com data-sources. Based on the research questions, it was analyzed whether the AAS of the publications showed a significant difference in terms of discipline, access status, access type, and interinstitutional-collaboration type and whether there was a significant relationship between AAS and the number of interinstitutional-collaborations. Among the thirteen Altmetric.com data-sources, Twitter has become the most content was shared about publications. This is followed by patents. This finding is remarkable in that it differs from the related studies. Similar to the literature, it was observed that medicine and health sciences are at the forefront in terms of the number of publications and AAS. Moreover, humanities have exhibited high AAS in contrast to engineering. The findings also indicated that open-access (%42) and international (%39) publications have higher AAS than those of non open-access and national ones. Moreover, Hacettepe University has come to the fore as the Turkey-addressed institution with the most interinstitutional-collaboration. The results of the study revealed that publications that are multidisciplinary, open-access, international, and that have a higher number of interinstitutional-collaborations stand out in terms of their AAS. More research is needed to find out what altmetrics measure in practice, whether they yield meaningful results, and what previously unknown patterns they expose.