Unwrap citation count, Altmetric Attention Score and Mendeley readership status of highly cited articles in the top-tier LIS journals Yingqi Tang Houston Cole Library, Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, Alabama, USA Hungwei Tseng Online@Jsu, Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, Alabama, USA, and Charlcie Vann Houston Cole Library, Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, Alabama, USA Abstract Purpose – The purpose of the study is to use a multidimensional perspective on the analysis of scholarly articles published in the top-tier Library and Information Science (LIS) journals. The relationships between the impact factors (Altmetric attention score [AAS], citation count and Mendeley readership) were analyzed, and reader profiles were characterized and studied. Design/methodology/approach – This paper examined citation count, AAS and Mendeley readership of the most cited articles published in the top-tier LIS journals – The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Government Information Quarterly and Library and Information Science Research. A total of 61 articles were analyzed. Data were recorded on an Excel spreadsheet and exported to the statistical software package SPSS 18.0 for Windows to perform the descriptive and correlation analysis. Findings – This study suggests that Mendeley readership and AAS could be used as supplemental measurements for assessing the impact of a publication or author in the LIS. AAS and Mendeley readership are positively correlated with citation count, and the correlation between Mendeley readership and citation count was stronger than AAS and citation count. Librarians are dominant readers of the top-tier LIS journals, followed by social sciences, computer science and arts and humanities professions. Originality/value – This study introduces two newly launched metrics for measuring the research impact factor and discusses how they correlated with citation count. Moreover, the study details the spectrum of Altmetric for discovering readership of LIS top-tier journals. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that presents the spectrum of AAS and Mendeley readership of the most cited articles published in top-tier of LIS journals. The study reveals an alternative way of measuring LIS publication’s impact factor that enables researchers, librarians, administrators, publishers and other stakeholders in LIS to assess the influence of a publication from another angle. Keywords Impact factor, Library and information science, Mendeley readership, Bibliometric, Altmetric attention score, Citation count Paper type Research paper Introduction Citation count is a quantitative method of measuring the impact of a research work. A higher citation count may indicate that the research work receives more attention among peers, which could mean that the research contributes value to that discipline of literature. Citation count sums the number of times that an article is referenced by other authors. Top-tier LIS journals Received 7 January 2020 Revised 24 April 2020 Accepted 25 June 2020 Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication © Emerald Publishing Limited 2514-9342 DOI 10.1108/GKMC-01-2020-0005 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/2514-9342.htm