Analysis of the Characteristics and Influence Factors of High-Impact Papers that Common Concern to Researchers and the Public

Abstract

The analysis of the evolution of the distribution characteristics of “high-impact papers,” which are highly concerned by researchers and the public, and their influence on academic and social factors, provides a reference for the combination of Altmetrics index and traditional literature measurement index in scientific research evaluation. Selecting 2015 to 2019 Altmetrics TOP100 papers, which are also highly cited papers in Web of Science as the “high-impact papers” data set. This paper explores the basic characteristics of high-impact papers and the influencing factors of Altmetrics indicators on academia and society by using basic statistical methods and SPSS. The results show that high-impact papers mainly come from international authoritative journals in natural science and biomedical categories with higher influence factors; there are more researches on medical and health sciences in high-impact papers, followed by earth and environmental sciences and human society studies; paid acquisition is the main way to obtain high-impact papers, but the proportion of open or free access to papers is increasing; News, Twitter and Blogs are the main ways to spread high-impact papers on social media, Mendeley, Blogs and Facebook have a certain correlation with the academic influence of papers, and Mendeley is the main factor influencing the academic influence. Combining traditional measurement index with Altmetrics index can evaluate the influence of the paper in multiple dimensions more objectively.