196 research outputs found
“Tenure can withstand Twitter”: we need policies that promote science communication and protect those who engage
In the age of social media, the professor’s podium has expanded. Cassidy R. Sugimoto argues so too must our policies on science communication and academic freedom. Academic freedom is a right for unfettered freedom to research, but also with an obligation to disseminate that research. Twitter and other social media can be used to fulfill this obligation. What we need now are policies that promote science communication with the public and protect those who engage in this discourse
A Systematic Identification and Analysis of Scientists on Twitter
Metrics derived from Twitter and other social media---often referred to as
altmetrics---are increasingly used to estimate the broader social impacts of
scholarship. Such efforts, however, may produce highly misleading results, as
the entities that participate in conversations about science on these platforms
are largely unknown. For instance, if altmetric activities are generated mainly
by scientists, does it really capture broader social impacts of science? Here
we present a systematic approach to identifying and analyzing scientists on
Twitter. Our method can identify scientists across many disciplines, without
relying on external bibliographic data, and be easily adapted to identify other
stakeholder groups in science. We investigate the demographics, sharing
behaviors, and interconnectivity of the identified scientists. We find that
Twitter has been employed by scholars across the disciplinary spectrum, with an
over-representation of social and computer and information scientists;
under-representation of mathematical, physical, and life scientists; and a
better representation of women compared to scholarly publishing. Analysis of
the sharing of URLs reveals a distinct imprint of scholarly sites, yet only a
small fraction of shared URLs are science-related. We find an assortative
mixing with respect to disciplines in the networks between scientists,
suggesting the maintenance of disciplinary walls in social media. Our work
contributes to the literature both methodologically and conceptually---we
provide new methods for disambiguating and identifying particular actors on
social media and describing the behaviors of scientists, thus providing
foundational information for the construction and use of indicators on the
basis of social media metrics
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
What constitutes valuable scholarship? The use of altmetrics in promotion and tenure
The traditional ways in which promotion and tenure committees assess scholarship — whether quantitatively or qualitatively — are either inappropriate or insufficient for capturing its true value, argue Stacy Konkiel, Cassidy R. Sugimoto and Sierra Williams. Altmetrics can help fill in the knowledge gaps, but ultimately will only provide a limited view. Richer narratives can always be found by digging deeper into the qualitative data behind the metrics
Evaluating Reference Transactions in Academic Music Libraries
This study evaluates the quality of reference transactions in academic music libraries. The study builds on previous research that identified music libraries as having different evaluation needs than main, multidisciplinary academic libraries. Using unobtrusive evaluation techniques, this study analyzes chat/IM and e-mail reference transactions at 128 U.S. academic music libraries in order to determine the quality of responses provided. Differences in quality of responses between the two mediums are also analyzed. The results of this study provide a state-of-the-art view of the current media on which reference services are offered for music libraries, and the quality of those services. This work discusses the implications of the findings and provides suggestions for improving the quality of these reference services in academic music libraries
P-Rank: An indicator measuring prestige in heterogeneous scholarly networks
Ranking scientific productivity and prestige are often limited to homogeneous networks. These networks are unable to account for the multiple factors that constitute the scholarly communication and reward system. This study proposes a new informetric indicator, P-Rank, for measuring prestige in heterogeneous scholarly networks containing articles, authors, and journals. P-Rank differentiates the weight of each citation based on its citing papers, citing journals, and citing authors. Articles from 16 representative library and information science journals are selected as the dataset. Principle Component Analysis is conducted to examine the relationship between P-Rank and other bibliometric indicators. We also compare the correlation and rank variances between citation counts and P-Rank scores. This work provides a new approach to examining prestige in scholarly communication networks in a more comprehensive and nuanced way
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-Ă -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
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
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
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