Use of Twitter in Spanish Communication Journals

Authors : Victoria Tur-Viñes, Jesús Segarra-Saavedra, Tatiana Hidalgo-Marí

This is an exploratory study on the Twitter profiles managed by 30 Spanish Communication journals. The aim is to analyse the profile management, to identify the features of the most interactive content, and to propose effective practices motivating strategic management.

The management variables considered were the following: the launch date of the journal and launch of the Twitter profile; published content and frequency of publication; number of publications in 2016; number of Twitter followers.

The identification of the features of the most interactive tweets was performed in a 150-unit sample, taking into consideration the following factors: the number of retweets, likes, type of content (motivation), components forming the content, the date and time of publication, and origin of the publication (internal or unrelated).

The results reveal notable practices and certain deficiencies in the strategic management of social profiles. Twitter represents an innovative opportunity in scientific dissemination, and it establishes an inalienable strategy for creating and maintaining the brand-journal while retaining the need to strengthen followers’ reciprocity. Other potential uses are suggested.

URL : Use of Twitter in Spanish Communication Journals

Alternative location : http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/6/3/34

Tweet success? Scientific communication correlates with increased citations in Ecology and Conservation

Authors : Clayton T. Lamb​, Sophie L. Gilbert, Adam T. Ford

Science communication is seen as critical for the disciplines of ecology and conservation, where research products are often used to shape policy and decision making. Scientists are increasing their online media communication, via social media and news.

Such media engagement has been thought to influence or predict traditional metrics of scholarship, such as citation rates. Here, we measure the association between citation rates and the Altmetric Attention Score—an indicator of the amount and reach of the attention an article has received—along with other forms of bibliometric performance (year published, journal impact factor, and article type).

We found that Attention Score was positively correlated with citation rates. However, in recent years, we detected increasing media exposure did not relate to the equivalent citations as in earlier years; signalling a diminishing return on investment.

Citations correlated with journal impact factors up to ∼13, but then plateaued, demonstrating that maximizing citations does not require publishing in the highest-impact journals. We conclude that ecology and conservation researchers can increase exposure of their research through social media engagement and, simultaneously, enhance their performance under traditional measures of scholarly activity.

URL : Tweet success? Scientific communication correlates with increased citations in Ecology and Conservation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4564

Content is King: An Analysis of How the Twitter Discourse Surrounding Open Education Unfolded From 2009 to 2016

Authors : Michael Paskevicius, George Veletsianos, Royce Kimmons

Inspired by open educational resources, open pedagogy, and open source software, the openness movement in education has different meanings for different people. In this study, we use Twitter data to examine the discourses surrounding openness as well as the people who participate in discourse around openness.

By targeting hashtags related to open education, we gathered the most extensive dataset of historical open education tweets to date (n = 178,304 tweets and 23,061 users) and conducted a mixed methods analysis of openness from 2009 to 2016.

Findings show that the diversity of participants has varied somewhat over time and that the discourse has predominantly revolved around open resources, although there are signs that an increase in interest around pedagogy, teaching, and learning is emerging.

URL : Content is King: An Analysis of How the Twitter Discourse Surrounding Open Education Unfolded From 2009 to 2016

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i1.3267

Allegation of scientific misconduct increases Twitter attention

Authors : Lutz Bornmann, Robin Haunschild

The web-based microblogging system Twitter is a very popular altmetrics source for measuring the broader impact of science. In this case study, we demonstrate how problematic the use of Twitter data for research evaluation can be, even though the aspiration of measurement is degraded from impact to attention measurement.

We collected the Twitter data for the paper published by Yamamizu et al. (2017). An investigative committee found that the main figures in the paper are fraudulent.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.00606

The counting house: measuring those who count. Presence of Bibliometrics, Scientometrics, Informetrics, Webometrics and Altmetrics in the Google Scholar Citations, ResearcherID, ResearchGate, Mendeley & Twitter

Authors : Alberto Martin-Martin, Enrique Orduna-Malea, Juan M. Ayllon, Emilio Delgado Lopez-Cozar

Following in the footsteps of the model of scientific communication, which has recently gone through a metamorphosis (from the Gutenberg galaxy to the Web galaxy), a change in the model and methods of scientific evaluation is also taking place.

A set of new scientific tools are now providing a variety of indicators which measure all actions and interactions among scientists in the digital space, making new aspects of scientific communication emerge.

In this work we present a method for capturing the structure of an entire scientific community (the Bibliometrics, Scientometrics, Informetrics, Webometrics, and Altmetrics community) and the main agents that are part of it (scientists, documents, and sources) through the lens of Google Scholar Citations.

Additionally, we compare these author portraits to the ones offered by other profile or social platforms currently used by academics (ResearcherID, ResearchGate, Mendeley, and Twitter), in order to test their degree of use, completeness, reliability, and the validity of the information they provide.

A sample of 814 authors (researchers in Bibliometrics with a public profile created in Google Scholar Citations was subsequently searched in the other platforms, collecting the main indicators computed by each of them.

The data collection was carried out on September, 2015. The Spearman correlation was applied to these indicators (a total of 31) , and a Principal Component Analysis was carried out in order to reveal the relationships among metrics and platforms as well as the possible existence of metric cluster.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.02412

Scholars on Twitter: who and how many are they?

Authors :  Rodrigo Costas, Jeroen van Honk, Thomas Franssen

In this paper we present a novel methodology for identifying scholars with a Twitter account. By combining bibliometric data from Web of Science and Twitter users identified by Altmetric.com we have obtained the largest set of individual scholars matched with Twitter users made so far.

Our methodology consists of a combination of matching algorithms, considering different linguistic elements of both author names and Twitter names; followed by a rule-based scoring system that weights the common occurrence of several elements related with the names, individual elements and activities of both Twitter users and scholars matched.

Our results indicate that about 2% of the overall population of scholars in the Web of Science is active on Twitter. By domain we find a strong presence of researchers from the Social Sciences and the Humanities. Natural Sciences is the domain with the lowest level of scholars on Twitter.

Researchers on Twitter also tend to be younger than those that are not on Twitter. As this is a bibliometric-based approach, it is important to highlight the reliance of the method on the number of publications produced and tweeted by the scholars, thus the share of scholars on Twitter ranges between 1% and 5% depending on their level of productivity. Further research is suggested in order to improve and expand the methodology.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.05667

What do computer scientists tweet? Analyzing the link-sharing practice on Twitter

Authors : Marco Schmitt, Robert Jäschke

Twitter communication has permeated every sphere of society. To highlight and share small pieces of information with possibly vast audiences or small circles of the interested has some value in almost any aspect of social life.

But what is the value exactly for a scientific field? We perform a comprehensive study of computer scientists using Twitter and their tweeting behavior concerning the sharing of web links.

Discerning the domains, hosts and individual web pages being tweeted and the differences between computer scientists and a Twitter sample enables us to look in depth at the Twitter-based information sharing practices of a scientific community.

Additionally, we aim at providing a deeper understanding of the role and impact of altmetrics in computer science and give a glance at the publications mentioned on Twitter that are most relevant for the computer science community.

Our results show a link sharing culture that concentrates more heavily on public and professional quality information than the Twitter sample does. The results also show a broad variety in linked sources and especially in linked publications with some publications clearly related to community-specific interests of computer scientists, while others with a strong relation to attention mechanisms in social media.

This refers to the observation that Twitter is a hybrid form of social media between an information service and a social network service.

Overall the computer scientists’ style of usage seems to be more on the information-oriented side and to some degree also on professional usage. Therefore, altmetrics are of considerable use in analyzing computer science.

URL : What do computer scientists tweet? Analyzing the link-sharing practice on Twitter

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179630