Scientific software is a fundamental player in modern science, participating in all stages of scientific knowledge production. Software occasionally supports the development of trivial tasks, while at other instances it determines procedures, methods, protocols, results, or conclusions related with the scientific work. The growing relevance of scientific software as a research product with value of its own has triggered the development of quantitative science studies of scientific software. The main objective of this study is to illustrate a link-based webometric approach to characterize the online mentions to scientific software across different analytical frameworks. To do this, the bibliometric software VOSviewer is used as a case study. Considering VOSviewer’s official website as a baseline, online mentions to this website were counted in three different analytical frameworks: academic literature via Google Scholar (988 mentioning publications), webpages via Majestic (1,330 mentioning websites), and tweets via Twitter (267 mentioning tweets). Google scholar mentions shows how VOSviewer is used as a research resource, whilst mentions in webpages and tweets show the interest on VOSviewer’s website from an informational and a conversational point of view. Results evidence that URL mentions can be used to gather all sorts of online impacts related to non-traditional research objects, like software, thus expanding the analytical scientometric toolset by incorporating a novel digital dimension.

科学软件是现代科学的基本参与者，参与科学知识生产的所有阶段。软件有时支持微不足道的任务的开发，而在其他情况下，它确定与科学工作相关的程序、方法、协议、结果或结论。科学软件作为具有自身价值的研究产品的相关性日益增强，引发了科学软件定量科学研究的发展。本研究的主要目的是说明一种基于链接的网络测量方法，以表征跨不同分析框架对科学软件的在线提及。为此，使用文献计量软件 VOSviewer 作为案例研究。以VOSviewer官网为基准，对该网站的在线提及被计算在三个不同的分析框架中：通过 Google Scholar 提供的学术文献（988 条提及出版物）、通过 Majestic 提供的网页（1,330 条提及网站）和通过 Twitter 发布的推文（267 条提及推文）。谷歌学者提及显示了 VOSviewer 如何被用作研究资源，而网页和推文中的提及则从信息和对话的角度显示了对 VOSviewer 网站的兴趣。结果证明，URL 提及可用于收集与非传统研究对象（如软件）相关的各种在线影响，从而通过纳入新的数字维度来扩展分析科学计量工具集。330 个提及网站），以及通过 Twitter 发布的推文（267 个提及推文）。谷歌学者提及显示了 VOSviewer 如何被用作研究资源，而网页和推文中的提及则从信息和对话的角度显示了对 VOSviewer 网站的兴趣。结果证明，URL 提及可用于收集与非传统研究对象（如软件）相关的各种在线影响，从而通过纳入新的数字维度来扩展分析科学计量工具集。330 个提及网站），以及通过 Twitter 发布的推文（267 个提及推文）。谷歌学者提及显示了 VOSviewer 如何被用作研究资源，而网页和推文中的提及则从信息和对话的角度显示了对 VOSviewer 网站的兴趣。结果证明，URL 提及可用于收集与非传统研究对象（如软件）相关的各种在线影响，从而通过纳入新的数字维度来扩展分析科学计量工具集。