Catégorie : EN

Catégories
EN

Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact Based on Twitter and Correlation with Traditional Metrics of Scientific Impact

Background

Citations in peer-reviewed articles and the impact factor are generally accepted measures of scientific impact. Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter, blogs or social bookmarking tools provide the possibility to construct innovative article-level or journal-level metrics to gauge impact and influence. However, the relationship of the these new metrics to traditional metrics such as citations is not known.

Objective:

(1) To explore the feasibility of measuring social impact of and public attention to scholarly articles by analyzing buzz in social media, (2) to explore the dynamics, content, and timing of tweets relative to the publication of a scholarly article, and (3) to explore whether these metrics are sensitive and specific enough to predict highly cited articles.

Methods

Between July 2008 and November 2011, all tweets containing links to articles in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) were mined. For a subset of 1573 tweets about 55 articles published between issues 3/2009 and 2/2010, different metrics of social media impact were calculated and compared against subsequent citation data from Scopus and Google Scholar 17 to 29 months later. A heuristic to predict the top-cited articles in each issue through tweet metrics was validated.

Results

A total of 4208 tweets cited 286 distinct JMIR articles. The distribution of tweets over the first 30 days after article publication followed a power law (Zipf, Bradford, or Pareto distribution), with most tweets sent on the day when an article was published (1458/3318, 43.94% of all tweets in a 60-day period) or on the following day (528/3318, 15.9%), followed by a rapid decay. The Pearson correlations between tweetations and citations were moderate and statistically significant, with correlation coefficients ranging from .42 to .72 for the log-transformed Google Scholar citations, but were less clear for Scopus citations and rank correlations. A linear multivariate model with time and tweets as significant predictors (P < .001) could explain 27% of the variation of citations. Highly tweeted articles were 11 times more likely to be highly cited than less-tweeted articles (9/12 or 75% of highly tweeted article were highly cited, while only 3/43 or 7% of less-tweeted articles were highly cited; rate ratio 0.75/0.07 = 10.75, 95% confidence interval, 3.4–33.6). Top-cited articles can be predicted from top-tweeted articles with 93% specificity and 75% sensitivity.

Conclusions

Tweets can predict highly cited articles within the first 3 days of article publication. Social media activity either increases citations or reflects the underlying qualities of the article that also predict citations, but the true use of these metrics is to measure the distinct concept of social impact. Social impact measures based on tweets are proposed to complement traditional citation metrics. The proposed twimpact factor may be a useful and timely metric to measure uptake of research findings and to filter research findings resonating with the public in real time.

URL : http://www.jmir.org/2011/4/e123/

Catégories
EN

Citations to Wikipedia in Chemistry Journals: A Preliminary Study

Wikipedia has been the subject of an increasing number of studies. Many of these have focused on the quality of Wikipedia articles and the use of Wikipedia by students. Little research has focused on the use of Wikipedia by scholars. This study helps to fill that gap by examining citations to Wikipedia in chemistry journals from three major publishers over a five year period.

The study reports the number of citations to Wikipedia and describes how Wikipedia is being cited. The results show that, while only a small percentage of all articles contained a citation to Wikipedia, it is in fact being cited as a credible information source in articles in major chemistry journals.

URL : http://www.istl.org/11-fall/refereed2.html

Catégories
EN

Do age and professional rank influence the order of authorship in scientific publications? Some evidence from a micro-level perspective

Scientific authorship has important implications in science since it reflects the contribution to research of the different individual scientists and it is considered by evaluation committees in research assessment processes.

This study analyses the order of authorship in the scientific output of 1,064 permanent scientists at the Spanish CSIC (WoS, 1994–2004).

The influence of age, professional rank and bibliometric profile of scientists over the position of their names in the byline of publications is explored in three different research areas: Biology and Biomedicine, Materials Science and Natural Resources. There is a strong trend for signatures of younger researchers and those in the lower professional ranks to appear in the first position (junior signing pattern), while more veteran or highly-ranked ones, who tend to play supervisory functions in research, are proportionally more likely to sign in the last position (senior signing pattern).

Professional rank and age have an effect on authorship order in the three fields analysed, but there are inter-field differences. Authorship patterns are especially marked in the most collaboration-intensive field (i.e. Biology and Biomedicine), where professional rank seems to be more significant than age in determining the role of scientists in research as seen through their authorship patterns, while age has a more significant effect in the least collaboration-intensive field (Natural Resources).

URL : http://www.springerlink.com/content/e713j65334v77037/

Catégories
EN

Open Access Part II: The Structure, Resources, and Implications for Nurses

Electronic publishing has changed the landscape for broadcasting scholarly information. Now Open Access is globalizing scholarly work. Open Access facilitates lifelong learning habits; enhances dissemination and distribution of information; impacts the informatics curriculum; supports active learning; and provides areas for nursing informatics research.

In the last 10 years the Open Access Movement has formalized into a distinct publishing paradigm. Many free, full-text resources are now available to guide nursing practice. This article describes the Open Access structure, and provides suggestions for using Open Access resources in classroom and practice settings.

The nursing community is only beginning to accept and use Open Access. Yet all nurses should be aware of the unique opportunity to obtain free, current, and scholarly information through a variety of avenues and also to incorporate this information into their daily practice.

The resources presented in this article can be used to increase nursing knowledge and support evidence-based practice. »

URL : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22320873

Catégories
EN

Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information

The Creative Commons (CC) licenses are a suite of copyright-based licenses defining terms for the distribution and re-use of creative works. CC provides licenses for different use cases and includes open content licenses such as the Attribution license (CC BY, used by many Open Access scientific publishers) and the Attribution Share Alike license (CC BY-SA, used by Wikipedia, for example). However, the license suite also contains non-free and non-open licenses like those containing a “non-commercial” (NC) condition.

Although many people identify “non-commercial” with “non-profit”, detailed analysis reveals that significant differences exist and that the license may impose some unexpected re-use limitations on works thus licensed. After providing background information on the concepts of Creative Commons licenses in general, this contribution focuses on the NC condition, its advantages, disadvantages and appropriate scope. Specifically, it contributes material towards a risk analysis for potential re-users of NC-licensed works.

URL : http://zookeys.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=3036

doi: 10.3897/zookeys.150.2189

Catégories
EN

A Review of Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate Policies

This article reviews the history of open access (OA) policies and examines the current status of mandate policy implementations. It finds that hundreds of policies have been proposed and adopted at various organizational levels and many of them have shown a positive effect on the rate of repository content accumulation.

However, it also detects policies showing little or no visible impact on repository development, and attempts to analyze the effects of different types of policies, with varied levels of success. It concludes that an open access mandate policy, by itself, will not change existing practices of scholarly self-archiving.

URL : http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/portal_pre_print/current/articles/12.1xia.pdf

Catégories
EN

Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success Research Report Version 1.0

Over the past five years, libraries have begun to expand their role in the scholarly publishing value chain by offering a greater range of pre-publication and editorial support services. Given the rapid evolution of these services, there is a clear community need for practical guidance concerning the challenges and opportunities facing library-based publishing programs.

Recognizing that library publishing services represent one part of a complex ecology of scholarly communication, Purdue University Libraries, in collaboration with the Libraries of Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Utah, secured an IMLS National Leadership Grant under the title “Library Publishing Services: Strategies for Success.” The project, conducted between October 2010 and September 2011, seeks to advance the professionalism of library-based publishing by identifying successful library publishing strategies and services, highlighting best practices, and recommending priorities for building capacity.

The project has four components: 1) a survey of librarians designed to provide an overview of current practice for library publishing programs (led by consultant October Ivins); 2) a report presenting best practice case studies of the publishing programs at the partner institutions (written by consultant Raym Crow); 3) a series of workshops held at each participating institution to present and discuss the findings of the survey and case studies; and 4) a review of the existing literature on library publishing services. The results of these research threads are pulled together in this project white paper.

URL : http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib_research/136/