Do Articles Shared by Academic Medicine Social Media Influencers Drive Future Citation Rates? – Urology

Abstract:  Objectives

To assess the role of influential figures within social media (SoMe) in driving future citations.

 

Methods

All original articles published in the Journal of Urology (JU) and European Urology (EU) in 2018 were identified. For each article, number of mentions on any SoMe platform, article’s Twitter reach, and total citations were collected. Article characteristics such as type of study, article topic, and open access status were identified. Total academic research output was obtained for first and last authors of included articles.

 

Influential SoMe figures were defined as users that tweeted about included articles and had over 2000 followers. For these accounts, we collected total followers, total tweets, engagement statistics, verification status, and academic characteristics such as total citations and total prior publications. The impact of social media, article, and academic characteristics on future citations was assessed using panel data regression analysis.

 

Results

We identified 394 articles with 8,895 total citations and 460 SoMe influencers. On panel data regression modeling, tweets about a specific article were associated with future citations (0.17 citations per tweet about an article, p<0.001). SoMe influencer characteristics were not associated with increased citations (p>0.05).

The following non-SoMe-associated characteristics were predictive of future citations (p<0.001): study type (prospective studies received 12.9 more citations than cross-sectional studies), open access status (4.3 citations more if open access, p<0.001), and previously well-published first and last authors.

 

Conclusions

While SoMe posts are associated with increased visibility and higher future citation rates, SoMe influencers do not appear to drive these outcomes. Instead, high quality and accessibility were more predictive of future citability.

Distortion of journal impact factors in the era of paper mills: Molecular Therapy

Abstract:  Academia’s obsession with the journal impact factor has been a subject of debate for some time. Most would probably agree that it is useful as a crude measure of a journal’s prestige, quality, and general influence on a scientific or medical field but should not be overinterpreted. Nonetheless, some institutions go as far as disregarding a student’s or faculty member’s publications in journals with impact factors less than a certain number (often the magic number is 5) when it comes to performance evaluation, promotion, graduation, or hiring. Such overemphasis ignores that one journal with a lower impact factor may actually have more rigorous standards for acceptance of a paper than another with a higher impact factor. This situation may be observed for a variety of reasons, such as the degree of specialization of a journal or the ratio of review articles vs. original research papers. Another more nefarious contributor to a journal’s impact factor, manipulated citations, is also growing and threatening to expose the deepening cracks in the foundation of academia’s favorite metric.

 

Can open access increase LIS research’s policy impact? Using regression analysis and causal inference | SpringerLink

Abstract:  The relationship between open access and academic impact (usually measured as citations received from academic publications) has been extensively studied but remains a very controversial topic. However, the effect of open access on policy impact (measured as citations received from policy documents) is still unknown. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of open access on the policy impact, which might initiate a new controversial topic. Research articles in the field of library and information science (LIS) were selected as the data sample (n?=?48,884). Negative binomial regression models were used to examine the dataset. Furthermore, propensity score matching (PSM) analysis, a causal inference approach, was used to estimate the effect of open access on the policy impact based on a selected LIS journal (Scientometrics, n?=?4019) that received the most policy citations among the LIS journals. Linear regression models, logit regression models, four other matching methods, open access status provided by different databases, and different sizes of data samples were used to check the robustness of the main results. This study revealed that open access had significant and positive effects on the policy impact.

 

The Beilstein-Institut collaborates with Lens.org

“Lens.org is a secure and open infrastructure to provide our readers with the most comprehensive and accurate overview of the impact of individual published articles. The discovery and citation tool is owned by Cambia, an independent non-profit social enterprise dedicated to democratizing problem solving using science and technology.

We are looking forward to our collaboration with Lens.org to support free, open and secure patent and scholarly searches while ensuring privacy and confidentiality.”

Evaluating open access publication and research impact in gynecologic oncology | International Journal of Gynecologic Cancer

Abstract:  Objective To evaluate whether a citation advantage exists for open access (OA) publications in gynecologic oncology.

Method A cross-sectional study of research and review articles published in the International Journal of Gynecological Cancer (IJGC) and in Gynecologic Oncology during 1980–2022. Bibliometric measures were compared between OA publications and non-OA publications. The role of authors in low/middle-income countries was assessed. We analyzed article characteristics associated with a high citations per year (CPY) score.

Results Overall, 18 515 articles were included, of which 2398 (13.0%) articles were published OA. The rate of OA has increased since 2007. During 2018–2022, the average proportion of articles published OA was 34.0% (range 28.5%–41.4%). OA articles had higher CPY (median (IQR), 3.0 (1.5–5.3) vs 1.3 (0.6–2.7), p<0.001). There was a strong positive correlation between OA proportion and impact factor; IJGC – r(23)=0.90, p<0.001, Gynecologic Oncology – r(23)=0.89, p<0.001. Articles by authors from low/middle-income countries were less common among OA articles than among non-OA articles (5.5% vs 10.7%, p<0.001). Articles by authors from low/middle-income countries were less common in the high CPY group than for articles without a high CPY score (8.0% vs 10.2%, p=0.003). The following article characteristics were found to be independently associated with a high CPY: publication after 2007, (adjusted odds ratio (aOR)=4.9, 95% CI 4.3 to 5.7), research funding reported (aOR=1.6, 95% CI 1.4 to 1.8), and being published OA (aOR=1.5, 95% CI 1.3–1.7). Articles written by authors in Central/South America or Asia had lower odds of having high CPY (Central/South America, aOR=0.5, 95% CI 0.3 to 0.8; Asia, aOR=0.6, 95% CI 0.5 to 0.7).

Conclusion OA articles have a higher CPY, with a strong positive correlation between OA proportion and impact factor. OA publishing has increased since 2007, but articles written by authors in low/middle-income countries are under-represented among OA publications.

Article-level metrics: A new approach to quantify reach and impact of published research – ScienceDirect

Abstract:  A spectrum of measuring tools are available to evaluate the impact of published literature and the journals they are published in. Journal Level Metrics (JLM) such as Journal Impact Factor (JIF) or CiteScore assess the reputation of peer-reviewed journals based on citation analysis. Whereas, Article Level Metrics (ALM) quantify the importance, reach and impact of a particular article, and are a new approach to quantifying the reach and impact of published research. Traditionally JLM has served as a proxy for an individual publication’s significance, however, the introduction of contemporary and evolution of Alternative metrics measuring digital or societal influence of a particular article has gained popularity in recent times. These metrics help in rapid dissemination of research, development of newer research strategies and individual academic progress. We highlight the characteristics and importance of currently available ALM, and the newer ones influenced by social media, digital media and Open Access publishing models.

 

 

 

Citation differences across research funding and access modalities – ScienceDirect

Abstract:  This research provides insight into the complex relationship between open access, funding, and citation advantage. It presents an analysis of research articles and their citations in the Scopus database across 40 subject categories. The sample includes 12 categories from Health Sciences, 7 from Life Sciences, 10 from Physical Sciences & Engineering, and 11 from Social Sciences & Humanities. Specifically, the analysis focuses on articles published in 2016 and the citations they received from 2016 to 2020. Our findings show that open access articles published in hybrid journals receive considerably more citations than those published in gold open access journals. Articles under the hybrid gold modality are cited on average twice as much as those in the gold modality, regardless of funding. Furthermore, we found that funded articles generally obtain 50 % more citations than unfunded ones within the same publication modality. Open access repositories significantly increase citations, particularly for articles without funding. Thus, articles in open access repositories receive 50 % more citations than paywalled ones.

 

Principles of Community-Engaged Research: Conversations with Toby Graham, Christopher Lawton, Christian Lopez, and Winnie Smith

Last Updated on May 19, 2023, 9:34 am ET

Alice Walker’s childhood home in Putnam County, Georgia  Photo by Wayne Bellamy, courtesy of Willson Center for Humanities & Arts, University of Georgia

Introduction

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Scholarship and Policy team builds capacity for scholar-focused research services, with a focus on community-based scholarship. As part of its Accelerating the Social Impact of Research (ASIR) initiative, ARL released a report and profiles of how eight participant libraries are working at the intersection of openness and community-engaged scholarship for social impact research.

The Russell Library story below supplements the ASIR work. This story was informed by conversations with Toby Graham, university librarian and associate provost, University Libraries, University of Georgia (UGA), and ARL member representative; Christopher Lawton, director of Experiential Learning for Putnam County Schools and director of the Georgia Virtual History Project; Christian Lopez, head of Oral History and Media at UGA’s Russell Library; and Winnie Smith, associate director, Willson Center for Humanities & Arts at UGA.

Since this article was drafted, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) named the University of Georgia as the winner of the 2022 C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship Award.

Students in Putnam County Connect History with Place

Students in Putnam County, Georgia, are deepening their understanding of the community they call home as part of an oral history project, An American Literary Landscape: Life, History, and Memory in Putnam County, Georgia.* I learned about this project from Winnie Smith when we partnered to advocate for humanities funding as part of the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) Humanities Advocacy Day. At UGA, the Willson Center is housed in the university’s Office of Research, giving it the flexibility to facilitate public humanities and arts projects throughout the university by funding projects, speaker series, student travel, fellowships, author visits, and more.  In a follow-up conversation, Smith shared that public humanities research projects like these can show students that local stories can help them better understand who they are and where they come from.

Christopher Lawton elaborated on this point, describing how teaching and learning can connect students with the community outside of their classroom. Through activities like recording oral histories and scanning and identifying photographs, students in Putnam get to know the rich literary traditions of the place they are from, and draw from the county’s history of enslavement to give context to current economic conditions. When we spoke, Lawton described how teaching students to collect and record stories allows them to realize what is missing or wrong in the textbook version of American history, and empowers them to “untell” that history, and to create new spaces for the voices that got left out. Lawton is leading a new initiative to create a pipeline from Putnam County Public Schools to Albany State University, which has committed to keeping the students in college for four years; the initiative is meant to support students in not just understanding, but also chipping away at, the socioeconomic weights that may have held them back.

Principles of Community-Engaged Research

Christian Lopez and Toby Graham see the library’s oral history program as one way to ensure that the library’s collections reflect the local community of Athens, Georgia. The Athens African American Oral History Initiative emphasizes shared agency and shared authority, which are key to understanding how oral histories at UGA have evolved. This evolution began when library leadership recognized the need to broaden the scope of its oral histories from reflections on Georgia politics to include representation of the intersection of politics and policy, government and culture. Lopez began to expand this scope by partnering with faculty from UGA’s history department—who also had a background in oral history—on a research project on the intersection of civics and music, art, and theater in the Athens music community. In planning for what became the Athens Music Project Oral History Collection, it took more than a year to train students to conduct outreach, record the interviews, and describe them using archival indexing.

Next, Lopez partnered with music faculty to examine the intersection of politics and economics from the perspective of different local musical communities in Athens. Through a grant from the Georgia Music Foundation, the library trained and compensated community interviewers, who conducted outreach and recorded 20 oral history interviews documenting music history in Athens; half of the interviews were with the hip-hop community. Today, the Athens Music Project Oral History Collection includes dozens of interviews documenting the diversity and depth of Georgia music and culture, and the Athens music culture and community.

As it has shifted toward collecting a more diverse set of voices, UGA’s oral history program is informed by the following values and principles of community-engaged research and archiving:

  • Community-engaged research is not possible until you have already done meaningful community engagement. This involves multiple conversations, and can take lots of time to build trust. These conversations may not necessarily result in action items. Lopez advises, “Start with a conversation, not an ask.” Throughout our discussion, Lopez emphasized the distinction between community engagement and community-engaged research. In a follow-up email, Lopez reiterated, “It takes a very long time.”
  • Understand that the needs of the institution and academy may not necessarily be the same as the needs of nonacademic communities. A community’s needs may not align with grant deliverables or timelines, or even with the academic calendar. Communities may have historic distrust of academic institutions, particularly when they parachute in to purportedly “help” communities without actually taking the time to build the necessary relationships.
  • Research libraries can support a culture change on campus by supporting faculty and students in understanding best practices in community-engaged research, and helping them understand what it means to strengthen relationships with community organizations. This includes understanding what it means to share agency, to co-curate, compensate, and follow up. These practices must be sustained before and after the community-engaged research. Working outside of academia may mean being adaptable, for instance, conducting interviews off campus, and outside of the school calendar.

Humanities in Place

Graham pointed out that UGA is a flagship land-grant research university, and that it’s important to correct the disconnect between the institution located in Athens and the community of Athens and around the state through UGA’s mission of research, instruction, and service. For instance, changing the culture of academia to ensure that oral history collections, special collections, and archives include materials created by Black people and organizations will support more inclusive teaching and research by faculty and students. Culture change is a long-term investment, and may involve discomfort, but it is critical to change the way we think about and engage with communities before we do the research. Graham said:

We have a great deal of work to do to correct the historical omissions in our collections. If we fail to build, steward, and share the diverse collection needed by our faculty and students, then we simply are falling short in serving our core teaching and research missions. We take very seriously our obligation to serve the people of Georgia and beyond, as well. Representing the stories, realities, and voices of all of types of communities should be a natural extension of our service mission. Going back to the principles, respectful and inclusive community engagement is key.

Oral history programs are among the most impactful tools we have in this work. There are all kinds of inequities associated with the ability to provide an enduring paper trail of one’s experience—the traditional bedrock of archives. But most people are able to tell their stories. What I most appreciate about Christian Lopez’s approach to community-based oral history is that he prioritizes the empowerment of our partners in engaging with one another to collect their own stories largely on their own terms. Oral history isn’t an extractive industry for him. It’s about listening and building relationships.

The Willson Center is currently partnering with UGA’s Russell Library on a Mellon Foundation–funded expansion of the Global Georgia Initiative, a public humanities program that began in 2013. The expanded Global Georgia Initiative includes Humanities in Place, a program to bolster off-campus public humanities collaborations. As part of its Humanities in Place program, Lopez successfully submitted a proposal for the Athens African American Oral History Initiative, which will build on the community-engaged work of the Athens Oral History Project and Athens Music Project Oral History Collection.

Stay engaged with the Athens African American Oral History Initiative on social media.

Endnote

* The Putnam County project is supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Challenge Grant, with matching funds from the UGA Willson Center for Humanities & Arts.

The post Principles of Community-Engaged Research: Conversations with Toby Graham, Christopher Lawton, Christian Lopez, and Winnie Smith appeared first on Association of Research Libraries.

What Should Impact Assessment Look Like for Social Science? — Sage

“A decade ago, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, or DORA, tackled the pressing need to improve how funders, institutions, policy makers and others evaluated scientific research and its outputs. Existing measures, centered on scholarly citation, tended to use where the outputs were published as a proxy for the research’s quality, utility, and impact, measuring all disciplines with the same yardstick.?

In the 10 years since, various efforts to improve assessment and measure societal impact have launched that downplay or even eliminate literature-based measurements. Ideas for these new measures focus on impact in the real world, address disciplinary differences such as those between social science and physical science, and offer useful tools for researchers and end-users alike.?

This panel will engage representatives of various social and behavioral science disciplines, as well as publishers, to discuss:?

What does impact assessment look like from their perch?

What should it look like??

How have their perspectives on impact changed over the last decade?

What changes would they like to see 10 years from now??

What necessary next steps should be taken – whether immediately practical or aspirational?…”

How can altmetrics improve the Public Communication of Science and Technology? An analysis on universities and altmetrics

Abstract:  In current research evaluation models, monitoring and impact evaluation are extended beyond peer-reviewed articles to include Public Communication of Science and Technology activities. Through an online survey, we analyzed the perceptions of relevance and degree of application of the altmetric indicators for the PCST of 51 sampled Brazilian federal universities. Perceptions of relevance and application of altmetrics proved to be an outlier in 26 indicators. 66.7% of respondents said they did not know the relevance of altmetrics for the PCST or considered it not applicable to the field. Regarding the perception of relevance, the indicator “Mentions tracked by altmetrics” received high relevance scores (7 and 9) from 21.5% of respondents. The indicator was also the least applied, with only one university (1.9%) using it. In addition, 45% of respondents reported having no intention of applying it, 41.1% intend to apply it in the long term, and 11.7% in the short term.

Antonia Seymour on why publishers matter – Publishers Association

“We’re fortunate to have the right honourable Lord David Willetts with us today. In his role as Minister for Universities and Science from 2010-2014, Lord Willetts saw open access as an enabling strategy that could unlock innovation and knowledge transfer.

10 years on and 95% of UK-authored research is published open access. What a tremendous example of what can be achieved when stakeholders in the research ecosystem work together to achieve a common goal.

Conducting science more openly undoubtedly accelerates scientific discovery. But doing so doesn’t necessarily mean that research has Impact.

There is plenty of data that shows that the final published version – known as the version of record – achieved via gold open access – is more discoverable, readable, citable, connected and credible than an accepted manuscript in a repository (so called Green open access).

How we make research openly available and how it is communicated is critical to its impact on science and society. Research dissemination being a planned process that academic publishers do really well….”

UKRI’s open access policy, a year on | Research Information

Caren Milloy outlines the policy’s impact and the work that made it happen

The launch of the UKRI’s OA policy in April 2022 marked an important waypoint on the journey to open access.

The policy provided a steer for how publicly funded research should be shared, reused, and built upon for the benefit of wider society. For Jisc, it aligned perfectly with our work with the sector to enable open access to UK research and to save the sector time and money.

 

ACS Environmental Au?How to Improve the Reach of Your Open Access Research | ACS Environmental Au

“Researchers at universities and other organizations are increasingly expected to demonstrate not only the scholarly impact of their research but also to show that the research has a broader reach and societal impact. Various metrics measure the impact of a research article. Many researchers are accustomed to assessing the impact of their articles by counting the number of citations after publication using online databases. While the number of citations provides one measure of the scholarly impact of an article, it does not necessarily provide information on whether the article is reaching a wider audience.

An additional metric available in ACS Environmental Au and all ACS journals is the Altmetric score. The web page for articles in ACS Environmental Au displays the number of “Article Views,” which is the total number of full-text article downloads (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals, the Altmetric score, and the number of citations since the publication of the article. The full-text article download number itself is a key indicator of the growing influence of an article. The Altmetric score records the attention an article has received online by measuring the number of times an article is reported in news outlets and articles, commented on in blogs, posted on social media (generally Twitter and Reddit), saved in reference managers such as Mendeley, or listed in an online encyclopedia (Wikipedia). An overall score is attributed to each article based on these measures. The makeup of the score is revealed by clicking on the Altmetric score or “doughnut” on the article web page….”

Fifteen years of Open Data Allows Advancements in Landsat Use and Research | U.S. Geological Survey

“On this day in 2008, the USGS announced their plan to ‘open’ the USGS EROS Landsat archives, making all Landsat data available to download at no charge, to all users worldwide. Fifteen years later, in the “Year of Open Science”, Landsat continues to lead how Earth Observation data is utilized, and how Landsat data is used to support science and research efforts. …

The graph below displays number of Landsat-related citations (orange line) and the cost per scene (blue line) from 1970 to 2022. As expected, citations increased greatly after the data became freely available starting in December 2008….”

Data sharing in the context of community-engaged research partnerships – ScienceDirect

“Highlights

 

Data sharing policies should consider to whom benefits do and do not accrue.
Community Engaged Research Principles would increase community benefit.
Funders should develop mechanisms to ensure community benefit from data sharing.
Funders should track impact of data sharing on community-relevant outcomes….”