The Twitter accounts of scientific journals: a dataset – Insights

Abstract:  Twitter harbours dense networks of academics, but to what extent do scientific journals use that platform? This article introduces a dataset of 3,485 Twitter accounts pertaining to a sample of 13,821 journals listed in Web of Science’s three major indices (SCIE, SSCI and AHCI). The summary statistics indicate that 25.2% of the journals have a dedicated Twitter presence. This number is likely to grow, as, on average, every one and a half days sees yet another journal setting up a new profile. The share of Twitter presence, however, varies strongly by publisher and discipline. The most active discipline is political science, which has almost 75% of its journals on Twitter, while other research categories have zero. The median account issues 116 messages a year and it interacts with distinct other users once in two to three Tweets. Approximately 600 journals refer to themselves as ‘peer-reviewed’, while 263 journals refer to their citation-based impact (like the impact factor) in their profile description. All in all, the data convey immense heterogeneity with respect to the Twitter behaviour of scientific journals. As there are numerous deceptive Twitter profile names established by predatory publishers, it is recommended that journals establish their official accounts lest bogus journals mislead the public about scientific findings. The dataset is available for use for further scientometric analyses.

 

Shutting down our preprint bots | Feb 21, 2023 | Liberate Science

“We started running Twitter bots in 2017, when Liberate Science was only a side project. First we launched the PsyArxiv bot. Later, we launched bots for the MetaArxiv (2020) and EdArxiv (2021) preprint servers. Six years in, we are shutting down these Twitter bots. You may have already noticed they are no longer posting any new preprints since February 13th (previously 9th). There are several things that motivate us to stop the preprint bots’ operations. It includes the exodus from Twitter overall; it includes the recent announcement that Twitter API access is no longer free. It includes that the community has taken it upon itself to offer replacement bots on Mastodon.?? We offered preprint bots for free all these years, but that does not mean it was free to run this. We had to run a custom RSS feed service (based on Jeff Spies’ osfpreprints-feed; run on Glitch for $99/year). Automating a bot is free and easy if there is relatively little volume. Especially for PsyArxiv, the amount of preprints grew so rapidly that we had to upgrade our automation and costs went up to ~$600 per year (using Zapier). This is also why the 1,500 free post limit proves too uncertain in the long run….”

Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow: five altmetric sources observed over a decade show evolving trends, by research age, attention source maturity and open access status | SpringerLink

The study of temporal trends in altmetrics is under-developed, and this multi-year observation study addresses some of the deficits in our understanding of altmetric behaviour over time. The attention surrounding research outputs, as partially captured by altmetrics, or alternative metrics, constitutes many varied forms of data. Over the years 2008–2013, a set of 7739 papers were sampled on six occasions. Five altmetric data sources were recorded (Twitter, Mendeley, News, Blogs and Policy) and analysed for temporal trends, with particular attention being paid to their Open Access status and discipline. Twitter attention both starts and ends quickly. Mendeley readers accumulate quickly, and continue to grow over the following years. News and blog attention is quick to start, although news attention persists over a longer timeframe. Citations in policy documents are slow to start, and are observed to be growing over a decade after publication. Over time, growth in Twitter activity is confirmed, alongside an apparent decline in blogging attention. Mendeley usage is observed to grow, but shows signs of recent decline. Policy attention is identified as the slowest form of impact studied by altmetrics, and one that strongly favours the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Open Access Altmetrics Advantage is seen to emerge and evolve over time, with each attention source showing different trends. The existence of late-emergent attention in all attention sources is confirmed.

Our Digital History Is at Risk – Internet Archive Blogs

“Publishers and platforms continue to play an important role in bringing the work of creators to market, and sometimes assist in the preservation task. But companies close, and change hands, and their commercial interests can cut against preservation and other important public benefits. 

Traditionally, libraries and archives filled this gap. But in the digital world, law and technology make their job increasingly difficult. For example, while a library could always simply buy a physical book on the open market in order to preserve it on their shelves, many publishers and platforms try to stop libraries from preserving information digitally. They may even use technical and legal measures to prevent libraries from doing so. While we strongly believe that fair use law enables libraries to perform traditional functions like preservation and lending in the digital environment, many publishers disagree, going so far as to sue libraries to stop them from doing so. 

We should not accept this state of affairs. Free societies need access to history, unaltered by changing corporate or political interests. This is the role that libraries have played and need to keep playing. This brings us back to Twitter….”

The Twitter accounts of scientific journals: a dataset

Abstract:  Twitter harbours dense networks of academics, but to what extent do scientific journals use that platform? This article introduces a dataset of 3,485 Twitter accounts pertaining to a sample of 13,821 journals listed in Web of Science’s three major indices (SCIE, SSCI and AHCI). The summary statistics indicate that 25.2% of the journals have a dedicated Twitter presence. This number is likely to grow, as, on average, every one and a half days sees yet another journal setting up a new profile. The share of Twitter presence, however, varies strongly by publisher and discipline. The most active discipline is political science, which has almost 75% of its journals on Twitter, while other research categories have zero. The median account issues 116 messages a year and it interacts with distinct other users once in two to three Tweets. Approximately 600 journals refer to themselves as ‘peer-reviewed’, while 263 journals refer to their citation-based impact (like the impact factor) in their profile description. All in all, the data convey immense heterogeneity with respect to the Twitter behaviour of scientific journals. As there are numerous deceptive Twitter profile names established by predatory publishers, it is recommended that journals establish their official accounts lest bogus journals mislead the public about scientific findings. The dataset is available for use for further scientometric analyses.

Whose research benefits more from Twitter? On Twitter-worthiness of communication research and its role in reinforcing disparities of the field | PLOS ONE

Abstract:  Twitter has become an important promotional tool for scholarly work, but individual academic publications have varied degrees of visibility on the platform. We explain this variation through the concept of Twitter-worthiness: factors making certain academic publications more likely to be visible on Twitter. Using publications from communication studies as our analytical case, we conduct statistical analyses of 32187 articles spanning 82 journals. Findings show that publications from G12 countries, covering social media topics and published open access tend to be mentioned more on Twitter. Similar to prior studies, this study demonstrates that Twitter mentions are associated with peer citations. Nevertheless, Twitter also has the potential to reinforce pre-existing disparities between communication research communities, especially between researchers from developed and less-developed regions. Open access, however, does not reinforce such disparities.

 

[2212.07811] Do altmetric scores reflect article quality? Evidence from the UK Research Excellence Framework 2021

Abstract:  Altmetrics are web-based quantitative impact or attention indicators for academic articles that have been proposed to supplement citation counts. This article reports the first assessment of the extent to which mature altmetrics from this http URL and Mendeley associate with journal article quality. It exploits expert norm-referenced peer review scores from the UK Research Excellence Framework 2021 for 67,030+ journal articles in all fields 2014-17/18, split into 34 Units of Assessment (UoAs). The results show that altmetrics are better indicators of research quality than previously thought, although not as good as raw and field normalised Scopus citation counts. Surprisingly, field normalising citation counts can reduce their strength as a quality indicator for articles in a single field. For most UoAs, Mendeley reader counts are the best, tweet counts are also a relatively strong indicator in many fields, and Facebook, blogs and news citations are moderately strong indicators in some UoAs, at least in the UK. In general, altmetrics are the strongest indicators of research quality in the health and physical sciences and weakest in the arts and humanities. The Altmetric Attention Score, although hybrid, is almost as good as Mendeley reader counts as a quality indicator and reflects more non-scholarly impacts.

 

Cureus | Association Between Twitter Mention and Open-Access Status on Article Citation Metrics in the Field of Ophthalmology

Abstract:  Introduction: It is possible that social media use can boost not just articles’ social impact but the number of citations and academic influence as well. If a positive correlation between Twitter usage and citation metrics exists in the ophthalmology literature, it is important to broadcast this information to the ophthalmology community so they can use Twitter to increase academic engagement with their research. There has also been an increase in the number of articles available as open access. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the presence of an open-access citation advantage in the field of ophthalmology. This study aims to evaluate the relationship between Twitter mention and open access status on citation metrics in the ophthalmology literature.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional study comparing article citation metrics to Twitter mentions and open access status. We gathered data on ophthalmology research articles from the six highest-ranked ophthalmology journals published as part of a January 2019 issue. Data were collected in April 2022, 38 months after online publication. Data on citations for each article was based on Google Scholar and Scopus websites. The Altmetric Bookmarklet extension was used to determine the amount of social engagement each article received. The open-access status of each article was based on the status listed in its corresponding journal. Two-tailed t-tests were used to compare social media engagement and open access status with the number of Google Scholar and Scopus citations.

Results: A total of 102 original research articles were analyzed. 89 (87.3%) articles received a Twitter mention. Articles tweeted at least once had a significantly higher Google Scholar score (27.2 +/- 4) compared to articles not tweeted (16.4 +/- 1.7; 1.7-fold increase, p<0.05). Likewise, the average Scopus score was significantly higher for tweeted articles (18.6 +/- 2.6) compared to articles not tweeted (11.8 +/- 1.6; 1.6-fold increase, p<0.05). Articles listed as open access had a significantly higher number of Twitter mentions (11.8 +/- 1.8) compared to articles that were not open access (5.6 +/- 0.7; 2.1-fold increase, p<0.05). Open-access articles also had higher citation scores compared to articles that are not open access, but this relationship was not statistically significant.

Conclusion: This is the first study to evaluate the relationship between article Twitter mention and citation score in the field of ophthalmology. It demonstrates a significant positive correlation between the article Twitter mention and citation score and provides further evidence that social media engagement can be beneficial to the dissemination of academic information. Further studies on the relationship between social media engagement and article dissemination are warranted in the field of ophthalmology.

Should #SciTwitter Migrate Elsewhere? | Technology Networks

” “The Twitter model has been enormously helpful for me to share my work widely and rapidly, to get very useful feedback and discussion about my work and for me to discover the work of others that I would not have seen otherwise,” says Professor Brian Nosek, social-cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, co-founder and director of the Center for Open Science.

Beyond communicating research, Twitter has also enabled researchers from across the globe to connect, form new friendships and even discover job opportunities. Previously, this might have only been possible through attending scientific conferences, which are not always accessible or affordable, particularly for early-career researchers. “Among scientists, it [#SciTwitter] has become one of the primary tools to announce new research findings, job openings and upcoming conferences. As a tool of public outreach, the platform has enabled direct dialogue with the public, particularly on crucial topics such as COVID-19 or climate change,” says Dr. David Brückner, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria who became involved in #SciTwitter during his PhD studies.

However, the future of #SciTwitter looks increasingly uncertain right now, as calls for its “migration” to an alternative online platform increase….

In publishing, community-based non-profits such as the preprint servers arXiv, bioRxiv or the journal eLife have been key drivers of positive change. Since #SciTwitter has become such an integral tool of our work, we should consider if there are possibilities for community-based open-source alternatives,” he says….”

Should #SciTwitter Migrate Elsewhere? | Technology Networks

” “The Twitter model has been enormously helpful for me to share my work widely and rapidly, to get very useful feedback and discussion about my work and for me to discover the work of others that I would not have seen otherwise,” says Professor Brian Nosek, social-cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, co-founder and director of the Center for Open Science.

Beyond communicating research, Twitter has also enabled researchers from across the globe to connect, form new friendships and even discover job opportunities. Previously, this might have only been possible through attending scientific conferences, which are not always accessible or affordable, particularly for early-career researchers. “Among scientists, it [#SciTwitter] has become one of the primary tools to announce new research findings, job openings and upcoming conferences. As a tool of public outreach, the platform has enabled direct dialogue with the public, particularly on crucial topics such as COVID-19 or climate change,” says Dr. David Brückner, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria who became involved in #SciTwitter during his PhD studies.

However, the future of #SciTwitter looks increasingly uncertain right now, as calls for its “migration” to an alternative online platform increase….

In publishing, community-based non-profits such as the preprint servers arXiv, bioRxiv or the journal eLife have been key drivers of positive change. Since #SciTwitter has become such an integral tool of our work, we should consider if there are possibilities for community-based open-source alternatives,” he says….”

Amplifying research influence through the social network, open access publishing, and international collaboration: A mediation analysis on nursing studies literature – Tang – Journal of Nursing Scholarship – Wiley Online Library

Abstract:  Introduction

Research impact and influence are commonly measured quantitatively by citation count received by research articles. Many institutes also use citation count as one of the factors in faculty performance appraisal and candidate selection of academic positions. Various strategies were recommended to amplify and accelerate research influence, particularly citation counts, by bringing research articles to a wider reach for potential readers. However, no prior empirical study was conducted to examine and valid effects of those strategies on nursing studies.

This study examines and verifies the direct effects and mediation effects of some strategies, namely, the use of Twitter, international collaboration, the use of ResearchGate, and open access publishing, for amplifying the citation of research and review articles in nursing studies.

Design

Cross-sectional study design.

Methods

Articles published in top nursing journals in 2016 were identified in PUBMED and the citation metrics for individual articles until 2021 were extracted from Scopus. The primary outcome was the citation count of the article, while the tweet count on Twitter of the article was considered a mediator. The predictors included paper type, the total number of authors, the proportion of authors with a ResearchGate account in the article, funding support, open-accessed article, and the number of different countries stated in the authors’ affiliation. A mediation analysis was conducted to examine the predictors’ direct and indirect effects (i.e., via tweet count) on the citation count of the article.

Results

A total of 2210 articles were included in this study, of which 223 (10.1%) were review articles. The median (IQR) number of Scopus citations, tweets, countries, and percentage of authors with ResearchGate accounts were 12 (6–21), 2 (0–6), 1 (1–1), and 75% (50%–100%) respectively. In the mediation analysis, tweet count, article type, number of countries, percentage of authors with a ResearchGate account, and journal impact factors in 2014 were positively associated with the Scopus citation count. The effects of article type, open access, and journals’ impact factors in 2014 on Scopus citation count were mediated by the tweet count.

Conclusion

This study provides empirical support for some strategies researchers may employ to amplify the citation count of their research articles. The methodology of our study can be extended to compare research influence between entities (e.g., across countries or institutes).

Clinical Relevance

The citation refers to the research work cited by peers and is one of the indicators for research impact. Higher citations implied the research work is read and used by others, therefore, understanding the associated factors with higher citations is critical.

Elbow Patches to Eye Patches? Scholarly Practices, Research Literature Access, and Academic Piracy

“Participant criteria: If you meet these criteria and are interested in contributing to a better understanding of research literature acquisition, please consider filling out this consent form and intake survey to be a potential research study participant:

Self-identify as a scholar or researcher (e.g. teach, do research, and/or publish scholarship)
May or may not be affiliated with a higher education institute
Located in the United States or affiliated with an institution in the United States
Have used Sci-Hub, Library Genesis (LibGen), Reddit/Scholar, Twitter (#ICanHazPDF) or some other online space to access research literature that you used (or plan to use) to complete your own research….

The purpose of this study is to illuminate how scholars’ engagement with and acquisition of research literature on academic pirate networks may reflect their conception of their scholarly identity which may include considerations of alienation from, resistance to, or negotiation with demands of the neoliberal academy.

The phenomenographic study will address the following research question:  How do scholars explain their experiences in participating on academic pirate networks?…”

An analysis of journalism articles achieving high Altmetric attention scores – ScienceOpen

Abstract:  New methods of judging the impact of academic articles now include alternative metrics, and the goal of this study was to provide an insight into the journals and papers with top Altmetric attention scores (AAS) in the field of journalism. Scopus and Dimensions were used as the primary data sources. Fifteen journalism journals were identified from Scopus, and papers from these journals with an Altmetric Attention Score of over 100 were collected from Dimensions as the study’s sample, which comprised 87 papers. Most of the papers with high AAS were published after 2017, and five were published in 2022. The sample included a larger number of closed access articles ( n = 50) than open access ( n = 37), although analysis revealed that open access articles had higher median Tweets than closed access. Articles on journalism practice were more likely to receive attention from news outlets. None of the papers with high AAS are highly cited, which may be due to the limited time to accumulate citations. The journal with the highest impact factor (Digital Journalism) did not have the greatest number of papers with high AAS, but had far higher scores on Twitter engagement than the other journals. The results do not show any correlation between impact factors and citation metrics and social metrics.

 

An open dataset of scholars on Twitter

Abstract:  The role played by research scholars in the dissemination of scientific knowledge on social media has always been a central topic in social media metrics (altmetrics) research. Different approaches have been implemented to identify and characterize active scholars on social media platforms like Twitter. Some limitations of past approaches were their complexity and, most importantly, their reliance on licensed scientometric and altmetric data. The emergence of new open data sources like OpenAlex or Crossref Event Data provides opportunities to identify scholars on social media using only open data. This paper presents a novel and simple approach to match authors from OpenAlex with Twitter users identified in Crossref Event Data. The matching procedure is described and validated with ORCID data. The new approach matches nearly 500,000 matched scholars with their Twitter accounts with a level of high precision and moderate recall. The dataset of matched scholars is described and made openly available to the scientific community to empower more advanced studies of the interactions of research scholars on Twitter.

Who tweets climate change papers? investigating publics of research through users’ descriptions | PLOS ONE

As social issues like climate change become increasingly salient, digital traces left by scholarly documents can be used to assess their reach outside of academia. Our research examine who shared climate change research papers on Twitter by looking at the expressions used in profile descriptions. We categorized users in eight categories (academia, communication, political, professional, personal, organization, bots and publishers) associated to specific expressions. Results indicate how diverse publics may be represented in the communication of scholarly documents on Twitter. Supplementing our word detection analysis with qualitative assessments of the results, we highlight how the presence of unique or multiple categorizations in textual Twitter descriptions provides evidence of the publics of research in specific contexts. Our results show a more substantial communication by academics and organizations for papers published in 2016, whereas the general public comparatively participated more in 2015. Overall, there is significant participation of publics outside of academia in the communication of climate change research articles on Twitter, although the extent to which these publics participate varies between individual papers. This means that papers circulate in specific communities which need to be assessed to understand the reach of research on social media. Furthermore, the flexibility of our method provide means for research assessment that consider the contextuality and plurality of publics involved on Twitter.