The stability of Twitter metrics: A study on unavailable Twitter mentions of scientific publications

Authors : Zhichao Fang, Jonathan Dudek, Rodrigo Costas

This paper investigates the stability of Twitter counts of scientific publications over time. For this, we conducted an analysis of the availability statuses of over 2.6 million Twitter mentions received by the 1,154 most tweeted scientific publications recorded by this http URL up to October 2017.

Results show that of the Twitter mentions for these highly tweeted publications, about 14.3% have become unavailable by April 2019. Deletion of tweets by users is the main reason for unavailability, followed by suspension and protection of Twitter user accounts.

This study proposes two measures for describing the Twitter dissemination structures of publications: Degree of Originality (i.e., the proportion of original tweets received by a paper) and Degree of Concentration (i.e., the degree to which retweets concentrate on a single original tweet).

Twitter metrics of publications with relatively low Degree of Originality and relatively high Degree of Concentration are observed to be at greater risk of becoming unstable due to the potential disappearance of their Twitter mentions.

In light of these results, we emphasize the importance of paying attention to the potential risk of unstable Twitter counts, and the significance of identifying the different Twitter dissemination structures when studying the Twitter metrics of scientific publications.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.07491

Altmetrics data providers: A meta-analysis review of the coverage of metrics and publication

Author : José-Luis Ortega

The aim of this paper is to review the current and most relevant literature on the use of altmetric providers since 2012. This review is supported by a meta-analysis of the coverage and metric counts obtained by more than 100 publications that have used these bibliographic platforms for altmetric studies.

The article is the most comprehensive analysis of altmetric data providers (Lagotto, Altmetric.com, ImpactStory, Mendeley, PlumX, Crossref Event Data) and explores the coverage of publications, social media and events from a longitudinal view. Disciplinary differences were also analysed.

The results show that most of the studies are based on Altmetric.com data. This provider is the service that captures most mentions from social media sites, blogs and news outlets. PlumX has better coverage, counting more Mendeley readers, but capturing fewer events.

CED has a special coverage of mentions from Wikipedia, while Lagotto and ImpactStory are becoming disused products because of their limited reach.

URL : Altmetrics data providers: A meta-analysis review of the coverage of metrics and publication

Original location : https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/EPI/article/view/epi.2020.ene.07

Altmetrics and societal impact measurements: Match or mismatch? A literature review

Authors : Iman Tahamtan, Lutz Bornmann

Can alternative metrics (altmetrics) data be used to measure societal impact? We wrote this literature overview of empirical studies in order to find an answer to this question. The overview includes two parts.

The first part, “societal impact measurements”, explains possible methods and problems in measuring the societal impact of research, case studies for societal impact measurement, societal impact considerations at funding organizations, and the societal problems that should be solved by science.

The second part of the review, “altmetrics”, addresses a major question in research evaluation, which is whether altmetrics are proper indicators for measuring the societal impact of research. In the second part we explain the data sources used for altmetrics studies and the importance of field-normalized indicators for impact measurements.

This review indicates that it should be relevant for impact measurements to be oriented towards pressing societal problems. Case studies in which societal impact of certain pieces of research is explained seem to provide a legitimate method for measuring societal impact.

In the use of altmetrics, field-specific differences should be considered by applying field normalization (in cross-field comparisons). Altmetrics data such as social media counts might mainly reflect the public interest and discussion of scholarly works rather than their societal impact.

Altmetrics (Twitter data) might be especially fruitfully employed for research evaluation purposes, if they are used in the context of network approaches. Conclusions based on altmetrics data in research evaluation should be drawn with caution.

URL : Altmetrics and societal impact measurements: Match or mismatch? A literature review

Original location : https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/EPI/article/view/epi.2020.ene.02

How much research shared on Facebook is hidden from public view? A comparison of public and private online activity around PLOS ONE papers

Authors : Asura Enkhbayar, Stefanie Haustein, Germana Barata, Juan Pablo Alperin

Despite its undisputed position as the biggest social media platform, Facebook has never entered the main stage of altmetrics research. In this study, we argue that the lack of attention by altmetrics researchers is not due to a lack of relevant activity on the platform, but because of the challenges in collecting Facebook data have been limited to activity that takes place in a select group of public pages and groups.

We present a new method of collecting shares, reactions, and comments across the platform-including private timelines-and use it to gather data for all articles published between 2015 to 2017 in the journal PLOS ONE.

We compare the gathered data with altmetrics collected and aggregated by Altmetric. The results show that 58.7% of papers shared on the platform happen outside of public view and that, when collecting all shares, the volume of activity approximates patterns of engagement previously only observed for Twitter.

Both results suggest that the role and impact of Facebook as a medium for science and scholarly communication has been underestimated. Furthermore, they emphasise the importance of openness and transparency around the collection and aggregation of altmetrics.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.01476

Share or perish: Social media and the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing

Authors : Paul McNamara, Kim Usher

The impact of published research is sometimes measured by the number of citations an individual article accumulates. However, the time from publication to citation can be extensive. Years may pass before authors are able to measure the impact of their publication. Social media provides individuals and organizations a powerful medium with which to share information.

The power of social media is sometimes harnessed to share scholarly works, especially journal article citations and quotes. A non‐traditional bibliometric is required to understand the impact social media has on disseminating scholarly works/research.

The International Journal of Mental Health Nursing (IJMHN) appointed a social media editor as of 1 January 2017 to implement a strategy to increase the impact and reach of the journal’s articles.

To measure the impact of the IJMHN social media strategy, quantitative data for the eighteen months prior to the social media editor start date, and the eighteen months after that date (i.e.: from 01 July 2015 to 30 June 2018) were acquired and analysed.

Quantitative evidence demonstrates the effectiveness of one journal’s social media strategy in increasing the reach and readership of the articles it publishes.

This information may be of interest to those considering where to publish their research, those wanting to amplify the reach of their research, those who fund research, and journal editors and boards.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1111/inm.12600

The effect of bioRxiv preprints on citations and altmetrics

Authors : Nicholas Fraser, Fakhri Momeni, Philipp Mayr, Isabella Peters

A potential motivation for scientists to deposit their scientific work as preprints is to enhance its citation or social impact, an effect which has been empirically observed for preprints in physics, astronomy and mathematics deposited to arXiv. In this study we assessed the citation and altmetric advantage of bioRxiv, a preprint server for the biological sciences.

We retrieved metadata of all bioRxiv preprints deposited between November 2013 and December 2017, and matched them to articles that were subsequently published in peer-reviewed journals. Citation data from Scopus and altmetric data from Altmetric.com were used to compare citation and online sharing behaviour of bioRxiv preprints, their related journal articles, and non-deposited articles published in the same journals.

We found that bioRxiv-deposited journal articles received a sizeable citation and altmetric advantage over non-deposited articles. Regression analysis reveals that this advantage is not explained by multiple explanatory variables related to the article and its authorship.

bioRxiv preprints themselves are being directly cited in journal articles, regardless of whether the preprint has been subsequently published in a journal. bioRxiv preprints are also shared widely on Twitter and in blogs, but remain relatively scarce in mainstream media and Wikipedia articles, in comparison to peer-reviewed journal articles.

URL : https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/673665v1

Aligning Social Media Indicators with the Documents in an Open Access Repository

Authors: Luis Meneses, Alyssa Arbuckle, Hector Lopez, Belaid Moa, Richard Furuta, Ray Siemens

In this paper we describe our current efforts towards building a framework that extends the functionality of an Open Access Repository by implementing processes to incorporate the ongoing trends in social media into the context of a digital collection.

We refer to these processes collectively as the Social Media Engine. The purpose of our framework is twofold: first, we propose to challenge some of the preconceived notions of digital libraries by making repositories more dynamic; and second, by challenging this notion we want to promote public engagement and open scholarship.

As a work in progress, we believe that a real challenge lies in investigating the implications that these two points introduce within the context of the humanities.

URL : Aligning Social Media Indicators with the Documents in an Open Access Repository

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/kula.44