637 research outputs found
Tweeting biomedicine: an analysis of tweets and citations in the biomedical literature
Data collected by social media platforms have recently been introduced as a
new source for indicators to help measure the impact of scholarly research in
ways that are complementary to traditional citation-based indicators. Data
generated from social media activities related to scholarly content can be used
to reflect broad types of impact. This paper aims to provide systematic
evidence regarding how often Twitter is used to diffuse journal articles in the
biomedical and life sciences. The analysis is based on a set of 1.4 million
documents covered by both PubMed and Web of Science (WoS) and published between
2010 and 2012. The number of tweets containing links to these documents was
analyzed to evaluate the degree to which certain journals, disciplines, and
specialties were represented on Twitter. It is shown that, with less than 10%
of PubMed articles mentioned on Twitter, its uptake is low in general. The
relationship between tweets and WoS citations was examined for each document at
the level of journals and specialties. The results show that tweeting behavior
varies between journals and specialties and correlations between tweets and
citations are low, implying that impact metrics based on tweets are different
from those based on citations. A framework utilizing the coverage of articles
and the correlation between Twitter mentions and citations is proposed to
facilitate the evaluation of novel social-media based metrics and to shed light
on the question in how far the number of tweets is a valid metric to measure
research impact.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures, 5 table
The role of handbooks in knowledge creation and diffusion: A case of science and technology studies
Genre is considered to be an important element in scholarly communication and
in the practice of scientific disciplines. However, scientometric studies have
typically focused on a single genre, the journal article. The goal of this
study is to understand the role that handbooks play in knowledge creation and
diffusion and their relationship with the genre of journal articles,
particularly in highly interdisciplinary and emergent social science and
humanities disciplines. To shed light on these questions we focused on
handbooks and journal articles published over the last four decades belonging
to the research area of Science and Technology Studies (STS), broadly defined.
To get a detailed picture we used the full-text of five handbooks (500,000
words) and a well-defined set of 11,700 STS articles. We confirmed the
methodological split of STS into qualitative and quantitative (scientometric)
approaches. Even when the two traditions explore similar topics (e.g., science
and gender) they approach them from different starting points. The change in
cognitive foci in both handbooks and articles partially reflects the changing
trends in STS research, often driven by technology. Using text similarity
measures we found that, in the case of STS, handbooks play no special role in
either focusing the research efforts or marking their decline. In general, they
do not represent the summaries of research directions that have emerged since
the previous edition of the handbook.Comment: Accepted for publication in Journal of Informetric
Tweets as impact indicators: Examining the implications of automated bot accounts on Twitter
This brief communication presents preliminary findings on automated Twitter
accounts distributing links to scientific papers deposited on the preprint
repository arXiv. It discusses the implication of the presence of such bots
from the perspective of social media metrics (altmetrics), where mentions of
scholarly documents on Twitter have been suggested as a means of measuring
impact that is both broader and timelier than citations. We present preliminary
findings that automated Twitter accounts create a considerable amount of tweets
to scientific papers and that they behave differently than common social bots,
which has critical implications for the use of raw tweet counts in research
evaluation and assessment. We discuss some definitions of Twitter cyborgs and
bots in scholarly communication and propose differentiating between different
levels of engagement from tweeting only bibliographic information to discussing
or commenting on the content of a paper.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl
On the compliance of women engineers with a gendered scientific system
There has been considerable effort in the last decade to increase the participation of
women in engineering through various policies. However, there has been little empirical
research on gender disparities in engineering which help underpin the effective preparation,
co-ordination, and implementation of the science and technology (S&T) policies. This article
aims to present a comprehensive gendered analysis of engineering publications across different specialties and provide a cross-gender analysis of research output and scientific
impact of engineering researchers in academic, governmental, and industrial sectors. For
this purpose, 679,338 engineering articles published from 2008 to 2013 are extracted from
the Web of Science database and 974,837 authorships are analyzed. The structures of
co-authorship collaboration networks in different engineering disciplines are examined,
highlighting the role of female scientists in the diffusion of knowledge. The findings reveal
that men dominate 80% of all the scientific production in engineering. Women engineers
publish their papers in journals with higher Impact Factors than their male peers, but their
work receives lower recognition (fewer citations) from the scientific community. Engineers
—regardless of their gender—contribute to the reproduction of the male-dominated scientific structures through forming and repeating their collaborations predominantly with men.
The results of this study call for integration of data driven gender-related policies in existing
S&T discourse
The institutionalized stratification of the Chinese higher education system
To promote research excellence, China’s government has been offering substantial financial support for a small group of selected universities through three national research programs (Project 211, Project 985, Double First Class). However, admission to these programs may not be completely merit based. Based on a statistical analysis of Chinese universities’ scientific activities, this paper shows that this institutionalized hierarchy is not supported by empirical data on research performance, which contributes to inequalities and inefficiencies in Chinese higher education. To build and maintain research capacity, China must support meritocracy across the research system
The diverse niches of megajournals : specialism within generalism
Over the past decade, megajournals have expanded in popularity and established a
legitimate niche in academic publishing. Leveraging advantages of digital publishing, megajournals are characterized by large publication volume, broad interdisciplinary scope, and peer-review filters that select primarily for scientific soundness
as opposed to novelty or originality. These publishing innovations are complementary and competitive vis-à-vis traditional journals. We analyze how megajournals
(PLOS One, Scientific Reports) are represented in different fields relative to prominent generalist journals (Nature, PNAS, Science) and “quasi-megajournals” (Nature
Communications, PeerJ). Our results show that both megajournals and prominent
traditional journals have distinctive niches, despite the similar interdisciplinary
scopes of such journals. These niches—defined by publishing volume and disciplinary diversity—are dynamic and varied over the relatively brief histories of the
analyzed megajournals. Although the life sciences are the predominant contributor
to megajournals, there is variation in the disciplinary composition of different megajournals. The growth trajectories and disciplinary composition of generalist
journals—including megajournals—reflect changing knowledge dissemination and
reward structures in science
Summer Movements and Impact of Individual Striped Skunks, Mephitis mephitis, on Duck Nests in Saskatchewan
Striped Skunks (Mephitis mephitis) are important predators of duck eggs in the Canadian prairies. We estimated the impact of individual Striped Skunks on duck nests by intensive observations of foraging movements and depredation of duck nests in southern Saskatchewan, 1993-1994. Nightly, skunk movements were variable (range 0-20 km per night), and did not differ among seasons for females, or between males and females during the parturition/rearing season. Overall, nightly movement of Striped Skunks averaged 7.4 km for females (SD = 5.9 km, n = 20 females) and 6.7 km for males (SD = 3.2 km, n = 5 males). During 1,873 h of radio-tracking, we observed depredation of 10 duck nests by 8 skunks (7 F, 1 M). Using our observed estimate of one depredation for every 187 h, and averaged nightly activity of 8-10 h per night, we estimated that individual skunks find one duck nest every 19-23 nights. Thus, during the 60-day nesting season for ducks (mid-May to mid-July), individual skunks probably find 2-3 duck nests. These observations reinforce the growing evidence that, at normal duck nest densities (<2.5 nests/ha), depredation of eggs by Striped Skunks is opportunistic, and the impact of Striped Skunks on duck nests is a direct function of Striped Skunk abundance
Investigating the division of scientific labor using the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT)
Contributorship statements were introduced by scholarly journals in the late 1990s to provide
more details on the specific contributions made by authors to research papers. After more than a
decade of idiosyncratic taxonomies by journals, a partnership between medical journals and
standards organizations has led to the establishment, in 2015, of the Contributor Roles Taxonomy
(CRediT), which provides a standardized set of 14 research contributions. Using the data from
Public Library of Science (PLOS) journals over the 2017–2018 period (N = 30,054 papers), this
paper analyzes how research contributions are divided across research teams, focusing on the
association between division of labor and number of authors, and authors’ position and specific
contributions. It also assesses whether some contributions are more likely to be performed in
conjunction with others and examines how the new taxonomy provides greater insight into the
gendered nature of labor division. The paper concludes with a discussion of results with respect to
current issues in research evaluation, science policy, and responsible research practices
Une chronique bibliométrique des cent premières années de la bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information
Follow the leader : on the relationship between leadership and scholarly impact in international collaborations
National contributions to science are influenced by a number of factors, including economic
capacity, national scientific priorities, science policy, and institutional settings and cultures.
Nations do not have equal opportunities to access the global scientific market, and therefore, often seek out international partners with complementary resources and expertise.
This study aims at investigating national collaboration strategies, with a focus on research
leadership—measured through corresponding authorship—and its relationship with scientific impact. Results show that countries with higher R&D investments are more scientifically
independent, and confirm that international collaboration is positively related to citation
impact. However, leadership in international collaboration is inversely related with a countries’ share of international collaboration and there is a very little relationship between citation impact and international leadership. For instance, most countries—and particularly
those that have fewer resources—have higher scientific impact when they are not leading.
This suggests that, despite increasing global participation in science, most international collaborations are asymmetrical, and that the research system remains structured around a
few dominate nations
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