Online Engagement with Retracted Articles: Who, When, and How?

Retracted research discussed on social media can spread misinformation. Yet we lack an understanding of how retracted articles are mentioned by academic and non-academic users. This is especially relevant on Twitter due to the platform's prominent role in science communication. Here, we analyze the pre- and post-retraction differences in Twitter attention and engagement metrics for over 3,800 retracted English-language articles alongside comparable non-retracted articles. We subset these findings according to five user types detected by our supervised learning classifier: members of the public, academics, bots, science practitioners, and science communicators. We find that retracted articles receive greater user attention (tweet count) and engagement (likes, retweets, and replies) than non-retracted articles, especially among members of the public and bots, with the majority of user engagement happening before retraction. Our results highlight the prominent role of non-experts in discussions of retracted research and suggest an opportunity for social media platforms to contribute towards early detection of problematic scientific research online

Retracted Articles about COVID-19 Vaccines Enable Vaccine Misinformation on Twitter

Retracted scientific articles about COVID-19 vaccines have proliferated false claims about vaccination harms and discouraged vaccine acceptance. Our study analyzed the topical content of 4,876 English-language tweets about retracted COVID-19 vaccine research and found that 27.4% of tweets contained retraction-related misinformation. Misinformed tweets either ignored the retraction, or less commonly, politicized the retraction using conspiratorial rhetoric. To address this, Twitter and other social media platforms should expand their efforts to address retraction-related misinformation

Altmetric and bibliometric scores: does Open Access matter?

Since new publishing models and new communication channels are being developed, traditional ways of measuring journal and article impact are not sufficient – besides bibliometrics, altmetrics arises as a new method based on quantitative analysis of mentions on blogs, in the news, shares on social networking sites etc. The main purpose of the study is to analyze the altmetric indicators for Altmetric top 100 articles in 2014, and to compare them with traditional bibliometric data for the same articles. Also, altmetric scores for Open Access (OA) articles are compared to the scores for non-OA articles. The research confirms low correlation between the number of citations (in the first year after publication) and the altmetric score. Nevertheless, the altmetric score has a potential role in promoting articles and getting post-publication evaluation and feedback

Sharing of retracted COVID-19 articles: an altmetric study

Objective: This study examines the extent to which retracted articles pertaining to COVID-19 have been shared via social and mass media based on altmetric scores. Methods: Seventy-one retracted articles related to COVID-19 were identified from relevant databases, of which thirty-nine had an Altmetric Attention Score obtained using the Altmetrics Bookmarklet. Data extracted from the articles include overall attention score and demographics of sharers (e.g., geographic location, professional affiliation). Results: Retracted articles related to COVID-19 were shared tens of thousands of times to an audience of potentially hundreds of millions of readers and followers. Twitter was the largest medium for sharing these articles, and the United States was the country with the most sharers. While general members of the public were the largest proportion of sharers, researchers and professionals were not immune to sharing these articles on social media and on websites, blogs, or news media. Conclusions: These findings have potential implications for better understanding the spread of misleading or false information perpetuated in retracted scholarly publications. They emphasize the importance of quality peer review and research ethics among journals and responsibility among individuals who wish to share research findings

An altmetric approach to measure the social media attention of COVID-19 articles

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the entire world. This study aimed to measure how well COVID-19 articles attracted in the social web during the deadly pandemic period. A total of 145 articles from Nature journal were collected and analyzed to gauge the major metrics from various social platforms. The results showed that social media attention to the articles was fluctuating in each month recording an upward and downward trend. Twitter was the major carrier of COVID-19 articles with total 143452 mentions followed by news outlets with 5251 mentions. Articles were yet to penetrate in many other platforms like Highlights, Wiki, Video uploading and F1000. No metrics were recorded from reference managers manifesting that COVID-19 articles were travelling fast in social media rather than reference managers. Open access articles did not find any social media attention benefits compared to Non-open access articles. The findings of the study would give a proper insight into how well the COVID-19 articles are penetrated and discussed in social media platforms

Altmetrics attention score:what is behind the numbers?

Abstract. Today the digital means of communication are evolving rapidly, resulting in more improved and reliable ways of communication. Now the information can be shared or collected instantly, which means the impact through information collection and processing can be faster too. The digital means of research dissemination are enabling people to share their work instantly and gather the attention a lot quicker than the past. The faster means of communication also enabled the researchers to share their scholarly work instantly to extensive and broader addressees. The faster and instant means also empowered to quantify the impact of research works shared or disseminated digitally. Thus, to determining the impact generated by the disseminated academic work over the internet a contemporary or well suited and up to date or alternative approach was required to measure exact or nearly related impact of research outputs disseminated over the web. The requirements for measurement of the research impact over the web enabled platforms the initiate for the introduction and implementation alternative metrics was started in the last decade. Since its advent, the altmetrics has achieved various milestones regarding the measurement of research impact. The altmetrics is an alternative metric to complement the traditional citation-based approach provided another perspective for the researchers to see the visibility and the impression of research work mentioned or disseminated on web platforms. The altmetrics opened an impressive opportunity for the researchers to determine the impact of their work instantly, alongside the opportunities provided by the altmetrics there are limitations too, which hindered its progress to completely replace the traditional approaches to measure the research impact both qualitatively and quantitatively. In this thesis study the aim was established to evaluate the altmetrics as a substitutive platform for the quantification and measurement of research influence gathered over the internet. By utilizing literature review approach this study collected most relevant research articles and analysed the collected literature to answer the proposed questions in this thesis study. The results are collected to evaluate the altmetrics as an alternative research impact measuring platform and what does the altmetrics attention score tells us about a disseminated research work. The study found the major opportunities offered by the altmetrics and the limitations for the adaptability of altmetrics as a complete alternative approach. Conclusively, study found that the adoption of altmetrics will take time and the due to existing limitations. The alternative metrics approach or the altmetrics can balance the existing citation-based approaches but can’t completely replace them. The altmetric attention score and other indicators provided by altmetrics could be a good early indicator of the research outputs to determine the future impact of disseminated scholarly work

The Spread of Retracted Research into Policy Literature

Retractions warn users against relying on problematic evidence. Until recently, it has not been possible to systematically examine the influence of retracted research on policy literature. Here, we use three databases to measure the extent of the phenomenon, and explore what it might tell us about the users of such evidence. We identify policy relevant documents that cite retracted research, we review and categorise the nature of citations, and we interview policy document authors. Overall, we find 2.3% of retracted research is policy cited. This seems higher than one might have expected, similar even to some notable benchmarks for ‘normal’ non-retracted research that is policy-cited. The phenomenon is also multifaceted. Firstly, certain types of retracted research (those with errors, types 1 and 4) are more likely to be policy-cited than other types (those without errors, types 2 and 3). Secondly, although some policy relevant documents cite retracted research negatively, positive citations are twice as common and frequently occur after retraction. Thirdly, certain types of policy organisations appear better at identifying problematic research, and are perhaps more discerning when selecting and evaluating research