Étiquette : scientific communication

Catégories
EN

The Use of Twitter by Medical Journals: Systematic Review of the Literature

Authors : Natalie Erskine, Sharief Hendricks

Background

Medical journals use Twitter to engage and disseminate their research articles and implement a range of strategies to maximize reach and impact.

Objective

This study aims to systematically review the literature to synthesize and describe the different Twitter strategies used by medical journals and their effectiveness on journal impact and readership metrics.

Methods

A systematic search of the literature before February 2020 in four electronic databases (PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and ScienceDirect) was conducted. Articles were reviewed using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses) guidelines.

Results

The search identified 44 original research studies that evaluated Twitter strategies implemented by medical journals and analyzed the relationship between Twitter metrics and alternative and citation-based metrics. The key findings suggest that promoting publications on Twitter improves citation-based and alternative metrics for academic medical journals.

Moreover, implementing different Twitter strategies maximizes the amount of attention that publications and journals receive. The four key Twitter strategies implemented by many medical journals are tweeting the title and link of the article, infographics, podcasts, and hosting monthly internet-based journal clubs. Each strategy was successful in promoting the publications. However, different metrics were used to measure success.

Conclusions

Four key Twitter strategies are implemented by medical journals: tweeting the title and link of the article, infographics, podcasts, and hosting monthly internet-based journal clubs. In this review, each strategy was successful in promoting publications but used different metrics to measure success.

Thus, it is difficult to conclude which strategy is most effective. In addition, the four strategies have different costs and effects on dissemination and readership. We recommend that journals and researchers incorporate a combination of Twitter strategies to maximize research impact and capture audiences with a variety of learning methods.

URL : The Use of Twitter by Medical Journals: Systematic Review of the Literature

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2196/26378

Catégories
EN

Gender differences in scientific careers: A large-scale bibliometric analysis

Authors : Hanjo Boekhout, Inge van der Weijden, Ludo Waltman

We present a large-scale bibliometric analysis of gender differences in scientific careers, covering all scientific disciplines and a large number of countries worldwide. We take a longitudinal perspective in which we trace the publication careers of almost six million male and female researchers in the period 1996-2018.

Our analysis reveals an increasing trend in the percentage of women starting a career as publishing researcher, from 33% in 2000 to about 40% in recent years. Looking at cohorts of male and female researchers that started their publication career in the same year, we find that women seem to be somewhat less likely to continue their career as publishing researcher than men, but the difference is small.

We also observe that men produce on average between 15% and 20% more publications than women. Moreover, in biomedical disciplines, men are about 25% more likely than women to be last author of a publication, suggesting that men tend to have more senior roles than women.

Compared with cross-sectional studies, our longitudinal analysis has the advantage of providing a more in-depth understanding of gender imbalances among authors of scientific publications.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.12624

Catégories
EN

Claiming Credibility in Online Comments: Popular Debate Surrounding the COVID-19 Vaccine

Author : Ruth Breeze

At times of crisis, access to information takes on special importance, and in the Internet age of constant connectedness, this is truer than ever. Over the course of the pandemic, the huge public demand for constantly updated health information has been met with a massive response from official and scientific sources, as well as from the mainstream media. However, it has also generated a vast stream of user-generated digital postings.

Such phenomena are often regarded as unhelpful or even dangerous since they unwittingly spread misinformation or make it easier for potentially harmful disinformation to circulate. However, little is known about the dynamics of such forums or how scientific issues are represented there.

To address this knowledge gap, this chapter uses a corpus-assisted discourse approach to examine how “expert” knowledge and other sources of authority are represented and contested in a corpus of 10,880 reader comments responding to Mail Online articles on the development of the COVID-19 vaccine in February–July 2020.

The results show how “expert” knowledge is increasingly problematized and politicized, while other strategies are used to claim authority. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of sociological theories, and some tentative solutions are proposed.

URL : Claiming Credibility in Online Comments: Popular Debate Surrounding the COVID-19 Vaccine

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9030034

Catégories
EN

Reproducibility of COVID-19 pre-prints

Authors : Annie Collins, Rohan Alexander

To examine the reproducibility of COVID-19 research, we create a dataset of pre-prints posted to arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and SocArXiv between 28 January 2020 and 30 June 2021 that are related to COVID-19.

We extract the text from these pre-prints and parse them looking for keyword markers signalling the availability of the data and code underpinning the pre-print. For the pre-prints that are in our sample, we are unable to find markers of either open data or open code for 75 per cent of those on arXiv, 67 per cent of those on bioRxiv, 79 per cent of those on medRxiv, and 85 per cent of those on SocArXiv.

We conclude that there may be value in having authors categorize the degree of openness of their pre-print as part of the pre-print submissions process, and more broadly, there is a need to better integrate open science training into a wide range of fields.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.10724

Catégories
EN

Awareness Mentality and Strategic Behavior in Science

Author : Rafael Ball

Acknowledgement of scientific achievements was and is essentially achieved through the citation of a publication. Increasingly, however, it is no longer just the publication itself that plays an important role, but also the degree of attention that a scientist achieves with this very publication.

Thus, the importance of strategic behavior in science is progressing and an awareness mentality is spreading. In this paper, the causes and backgrounds of this development are discussed, identifying the use of reductionist, quantitative systems in science management and research funding, the loss of critical judgment and technocratic dominance, quantitative assessments used for decision making, altmetrics and the like as alternative views, the use of perception scores in reference databases and universities as well as ambitions of journals as main drivers.

Besides, different forms of strategic behavior in science and the resulting consequences and impacts are being highlighted.

URL : Awareness Mentality and Strategic Behavior in Science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2021.703159

Catégories
EN

Open Data Policies among Library and Information Science Journals

Author : Brian Jackson

Journal publishers play an important role in the open research data ecosystem. Through open data policies that include public data archiving mandates and data availability statements, journal publishers help promote transparency in research and wider access to a growing scholarly record.

The library and information science (LIS) discipline has a unique relationship with both open data initiatives and academic publishing and may be well-positioned to adopt rigorous open data policies.

This study examines the information provided on public-facing websites of LIS journals in order to describe the extent, and nature, of open data guidance provided to prospective authors.

Open access journals in the discipline have disproportionately adopted detailed, strict open data policies. Commercial publishers, which account for the largest share of publishing in the discipline, have largely adopted weaker policies. Rigorous policies, adopted by a minority of journals, describe the rationale, application, and expectations for open research data, while most journals that provide guidance on the matter use hesitant and vague language. Recommendations are provided for strengthening journal open data policies.

URL : Open Data Policies among Library and Information Science Journals

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications9020025

Catégories
EN

Communication Research, the Geopolitics of Knowledge and Publishing in High-Impact Journals: The Chronicle of a Commodification Process Foretold

Authors : Víctor Manuel Marí Sáez, Clara Martins do Nascimento

The reforms in higher education that have been introduced on a global scale in recent years have gone hand in glove with the progressive imposition of scientific journal impact factors, all of which points to the rise of academic capitalism and digital labour in universities that is increasingly subject to the logic of the market.

A diachronic analysis of this process allows for talking about, paraphrasing Gabriel García Márquez, the chronicle of a commodification process foretold. More than twenty years ago it was clear what was going to happen, but not how it was going to unfold.

Accordingly, this article reconstructs that process, comparing the Spanish case with global trends and highlighting the crucial role that governmental agencies like the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation and specific evaluation tools like the publication of scientific papers in high-impact journals have played in it.

In this analysis, Wallerstein’s core-periphery relations and the concept of commodity fetishism, as addressed by Walter Benjamin, prove to be especially useful. The main research question posed in this article is as follows: What does the process of the commodification of communication research look like in Spain?

URL : Communication Research, the Geopolitics of Knowledge and Publishing in High-Impact Journals: The Chronicle of a Commodification Process Foretold

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v19i2.1258