Social Web Coverage and X Attention to Library and Information Science Research: An Altmetric Analysis

Abstract

Online attention to library and information science research is often described through aggregate scores, although these can conceal substantial differences in the publications reached and the sources through which attention develops. This study examines 1,792 DOI-identified publications from five journals, published between 2015 and 2024. It measures recorded attention coverage, describes X participation, and ranks publications using the Altmetric Attention Score and a corpus-specific 90th-percentile threshold. A total of 853 publications had positive scores, giving coverage of 47.60%. X (formerly Twitter) covered 618 publications, or 34.49%, and generated 2,411 summed publication-user counts. Among X-covered publications, the median was two users and 87.38% attracted no more than five. One publication accounted for 19.49% of the X total. The 90th-percentile score was 6.064. Retaining all boundary ties produced a group of 181 publications, representing 10.10% of the corpus and 77.03% of its aggregate score. Nine of the ten highest-scoring publications had news mentions, whereas the most tweeted publication had none. These findings distinguish widespread but usually modest X participation from the source profiles associated with high composite scores. The study supports reporting coverage, conditional intensity, and source composition together for each journal and cohort. Its estimates describe the supplied journal corpus and the attention recorded by the provider. User counts cannot establish the depth, sentiment, or societal consequences of discussion.