Altmetrics and scholarly communication : A survey study among Swedish University library

Altmetrics is a relatively new metric system compared to traditional bibliometric methods. The purpose of this bachelor thesis was to conduct a cross-sectional study of the altmetric usage in Swedish university libraries and to see if and how they use altmetrics and how it can benefit the scholarly communication between academic librarians and scholars. The research questions are;• Do Swedish university libraries use altmetrics, and if so, how? • How do the librarians experience the attitude from the researchers, regarding their opinions about altmetrics? • How can altmetric tools be an aid in the scholarly communication and what is altmetrics advantages and disadvantages according to the librarians?A survey was sent out to all universities in Sweden and their main libraries. For theoretical framework the concepts Technologies of Control and Technologies of Narcissism together with the concept Cognitive Authority were used. The results show that altmetrics is a tool that the academic libraries are familiar with but few are actually using. The scholars and PhD students think that altmetrics is something than can be used for “fun”, to see their own impact but not for evaluating. The librarians see altmetric as a tool that is a complement to traditional citations and not something that will replace it. Altmetrics can show a broader and faster impact but the altmetric data is unreliable and more studies have to be done