Measuring field-normalized impact of papers on specific societal groups: An altmetrics study based on Mendeley Data

Bibliometrics is successful in measuring impact, because the target is\nclearly defined: the publishing scientist who is still active and working.\nThus, citations are a target-oriented metric which measures impact on science.\nIn contrast, societal impact measurements based on altmetrics are as a rule\nintended to measure impact in a broad sense on all areas of society (e.g.\nscience, culture, politics, and economics). This tendency is especially\nreflected in the efforts to design composite indicators (e.g. the Altmetric\nattention score). We deem appropriate that not only the impact measurement\nusing citations is target-oriented (citations measure the impact of papers on\nscientists), but also the measurement of impact using altmetrics. Impact\nmeasurements only make sense, if the target group - the recipient of academic\npapers - is clearly defined. Thus, we extend in this study the field-normalized\nreader impact indicator proposed by us in an earlier study, which is based on\nMendeley data (the mean normalized reader score, MNRS), to a target-oriented\nfield-normalized impact indicator (e.g., MNRS_ED measures reader impact on the\nsector of educational donation, i.e., teaching). This indicator can show - as\ndemonstrated in empirical examples - the ability of journals, countries, and\nacademic institutions to publish papers which are below or above the average\nimpact of papers on a specific sector in society (e.g., the educational or\nteaching sector). For example, the method allows to measure the impact of\nscientific papers on students - controlling for the field in which the papers\nhave been published and their publication year.\n