Altmetrics of Papers From Scientific Periphery Reflect Global Trends: A Case Study of Publications by Zagreb University School of Medicine

This study aims to investigate the altmetric activity of papers published by the University of Zagreb School of Medicine in internationally visible journals and to identify differences in altmetric activity between the papers published in international and local journals and between those published in English and Croatian. We also investigated changes in altmetric activity over time and the characteristics of papers with the highest Twitter and Mendeley activity. The sample included 390 papers collected from the bibliographic database Scopus. Their altmetric and citation activities were measured at three time points: in July 2014, 2015, and 2016. The findings generally correspond to those observed in the large-scale studies of medical papers. Papers in renowned journals, and papers reporting clinical guidelines and multicentric studies had the most intense altmetric activity. In contrast, papers published in local, Croatian journals showed minimal altmetric activity, especially the papers published in Croatian. These results indicate that the local publishing community has not yet recognised social media as a tool for promoting research and that non-English language publications have minimal chances to receive attention, even in social media. The evaluative potential of altmetric indicators has to be further explored in a broader context.