Max Leckert

Bibliometric measures are increasingly used in academic funding and hiring situations. Although rather vaguely described as “impact” or “performance” indicators, they often appear to be equaled with research quality. Altmetrics challenge established bibliometric evaluation concepts by promoting alternative notions of impact: Attention, visibility or societal relevance are some of the concepts that may be used to charge metrics with value and thus add to the many dimensions of quality. Research quality, however, is a hard to define concept. Researchers are likely to express different understandings of quality, influenced by their fields’ shared epistemic and cultural beliefs.

The advance of Open Science by Digital science communication (DSC) has been a major argument in promoting Altmetrics. Such metrifications of DSC have turned out to be a profitable business: Collected from commercial online platforms, aggregated by for-profit companies, showcased by most large publishers. While the question ‘what do they mean?’ remains, Altmetrics are reflected back on scientists, scoring their work alongside citation measures. By analyzing interviews with both researchers active in DSC and experts from the Altmetrics field, this contribution contrasts scientists’ situated online behavior with its re(e-)valuation in aggregated form. This allows to study the production of reactive potentials in science (e-) valuation.