Abstract: In the evaluation of research, the same unequal structure present in the production of research is reproduced. Despite a few very productive researchers (in terms of papers and citations received), there are also few researchers who are involved in the research evaluation process (in terms of being editorial board members of journals or reviewers). To produce a high number of papers and receive many citations and to be involved in the evaluation of research papers, you need to be in the minority of giants who have high productivity and more scientific success. As editorial board members and reviewers, we often find the same minority of giants. In this paper, we apply an economic approach to interpret recent trends in research evaluation and derive a new interpretation of Altmetrics as a response to the need for democratization of research and its evaluation. In this context, the majority of pygmies can participate in evaluation with Altmetrics, whose use is more democratic, that is, much wider and open to all. Published on 2021-06-22 11:35:00
Abstract: As the Covid-19 pandemic is a global threat to health that few can fully escape, it has provided a unique opportunity to study international reactions to a common problem. Such reactions can be partly obtained from public posts to Twitter, allowing investigations of changes in interest over time. This study analysed English-language Covid-19 tweets mentioning cures, treatments, or vaccines from 1 January 2020 to 8 April 2021, seeking trends and international differences. The results have methodological limitations but show a tendency for countries with a lower human development index score to tweet more about cures, although they were a minor topic for all countries. Vaccines were discussed about as much as treatments until July 2020, when they generated more interest because of developments in Russia. The November 2020 Pfizer-BioNTech preliminary Phase 3 trials results generated an immediate and sustained sharp increase, however, followed by a continuing roughly linear increase in interest for vaccines until at least April 2021. Against this background, national deviations from the average were triggered by country-specific news about cures, treatments, or vaccines. Nevertheless, interest in vaccines in all countries increased in parallel to some extent, despite substantial international differences in national regulatory approval and availability. The results also highlight that unsubstantiated claims about alternative medicine remedies gained traction in several countries, apparently posing a threat to public health. Published on 2021-06-08 12:10:47
Abstract: Twitter has increasingly become a resource used by academics to share scholarship and opinions within professional networks. This paper presents a descriptive analysis of Twitter use by urban planning faculty, reporting characteristics of users, the topics posted, and indicators of Twitter influence among urban planning faculty as well as those interested in planning from outside academic circles. Approximately one-third of urban planning academics are active Twitter users, and as of yet, there have been no empirical analyses of how and why they use the social media platform. This analysis uses Twitter data from active accounts for urban planning faculty in the U.S. and Canada identified as being used for professional purposes for the period from March 2007 to April 2019. Considering how planning academics use Twitter lends insights on its usefulness for academic discussion and scholarly communications. The conclusion discusses the prospects for planning academics to better utilize Twitter to broaden and deepen their professional activities while noting particular concerns. Published on 2021-05-07 11:46:48
Abstract: Altmetrics are new-age research impact metrics that hold the promise of looking beyond the traditional methods of measuring research impact. Altmetrics are real-time metrics that show the outreach of scientific research among an audience from different academic and non-academic backgrounds. Several altmetric systems have been developed in the last few years, either as a cumulative exploratory tool that showcases the different metrics from the various altmetric sources, or as part of existing publisher systems and databases. In the first part of this study, we have analyzed features of nine different altmetric systems, two academic social networking systems, and five other types of systems, including digital libraries, publisher systems, and databases. Results of a feature analysis indicated that the overall coverage of individual features by the systems is moderate, with maximum coverage being 27 out of 33 features analyzed. Features like the visualization of metrics, altmetric sources and bibliometric sources were not found in many systems. Identified gaps were later implemented in the second part of the study, wherein we developed a prototype system, called Altmetrics for Research Impact Actuation (ARIA). We also conducted a user evaluation study of the prototype, the outcome of which was used to improve certain features of ARIA based on user feedback. Published on 2021-02-22 12:19:47
Abstract: Social media platforms are increasingly part of the academic workflow. However, there is a lack of research that examines these activities, particularly at the author level. This paper explores the activity of researchers in the Twittersphere by analyzing a large database of Web of Science authors systematically identified on Twitter using data from Altmetric.com. Using this information, this paper explores and compares patterns of tweeted and self-tweeted publications with other academic activities, such as citations, self-citations, and authorship at the author level. This paper also compares the thematic orientation among these different activities by analyzing the similarity of the research topics of the publications tweeted, cited, and authored. The results show that the productivity and impact of researchers, as defined by conventional bibliometric indicators, are not correlated to their popularity on the Twitter platform and that scholars generally tend to tweet about topics closely related to the publications they author and cite. These findings suggest that social media metrics capture a broader aspect of the academic workflow that is most likely related to science communication, dissemination, and engagement with wider audiences and that differs from conventional forms of impact as captured by citations. Areas for further exploration are also proposed.1 Published on 2021-01-22 00:00:00
Abstract: Digital preservation of library materials has increased the need for methods to access the documents and contents maintained in digital archives. The use of altmetrics to quantify the impact of scholarly works, including PlumX, is increasing readership by listing articles in reference services. The outreach from the digital repository ScholarWorks at Stephen F. Austin State University (SFASU) highlights the impact within the natural resources community from Digital Commons, Forest Sciences Commons; and from the Natural Products Chemistry and Pharmacognosy Commons. The use of PlumX altmetrics was examined to evaluate usage, impact, and digital audience downloads for the Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture (ATCOFA) at SFASU. Published on 2020-10-16 11:23:17
Abstract: This study aimed to determine whether, and to what extent, the OA status and OA type of articles can predict their social media visibility, when controlling for a considerable number of important factors. Those factors, which previous research confirmed their positive association with altmetric counts, were journal impact, individual collaboration, research funding, number of MESH topics, topic, international collaboration, lay summary, being a mega journal, F1000 Score, and gender of first and last authors. The data for this study comprised 83,444 articles and reviews in the research area of Life Sciences and Biomedicine from 2012–2016, retrieved from Medline in November 2018. The results showed that the percentage of OA articles mentioned on altmetric platforms was significantly higher than those of the non-OA articles. Furthermore, Open Access was significantly associated with a higher probability of a paper being mentioned on the studied social media platforms. Compared to non-OA articles, the OA articles had a higher average of tweets, Facebooks posts, news posts, and blog posts. By increase of a unit in the OA status, the average number of tweets, Facebooks posts, news posts, and blog posts increased by 92.7%, 25.7%, 83.9% and 48.4%, respectively. Regarding the OA types (studied as Gold vs non-Gold), our findings showed that the Gold OA articles had a higher average number of Tweets and a higher probability of being mentioned in tweets and blogs. Published on 2020-08-12 14:42:43
Abstract: Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects millions of people worldwide. It is therefore unsurprising that there is a high volume of public discussions, resources, and research tackling various aspects of the disease. This study describes a new method for identifying areas of public interest in issues like diabetes and compares them to the topics being discussed in research. We tested our method by using posts from a popular diabetes discussion forum (DiabeticConnect), pages (articles) about diabetes published on Wikipedia, and the titles and abstracts of research articles about diabetes from the Scopus database. Tags assigned to each post in the discussion forum were used along with the post itself to compute a Labeled Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LLDA) model, which was then used to classify the Wikipedia pages and research articles. The resulting classifications were then used to compare the prevalence of the topics found in the discussion forum with that in the other two sources. The results show that the public interest in diabetes is not necessarily addressed by researchers. More importantly, the alignment and misalignment in the changes in relative interest over the various topics are evidence that LLDA modeling can be useful for comparing a public corpus, like a diabetes forum, and an academic one, like research article titles and abstracts. The success of using LLDA to classify research articles based on the tags assigned to posts in a public discussion forum shows that this a promising method for better understanding how the scientific community responds to public interests and needs. Published on 2020-07-10 12:22:56
Abstract: In the spring of 2019, survey research was conducted at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), a large, public, Carnegie-classified R1 institution in southwest Virginia, to determine faculty perceptions of research assessment as well as how and why they use researcher profiles and research impact indicators. The Faculty Senate Research Assessment Committee (FSRAC) reported the quantitative and qualitative results to the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors to demonstrate the need for systemic, political, and cultural change regarding how faculty are evaluated and rewarded at the university for their research and creative projects. The survey research and subsequent report started a gradual process to move the university to a more responsible, holistic, and inclusive research assessment environment. Key results from the survey, completed by close to 500 faculty from across the university, include: a.) the most frequently used researcher profile systems and the primary ways they are used (e.g., profiles are used most frequently for showcasing work, with results indicating that faculty prefer to use a combination of systems for this purpose); b.) the primary reasons faculty use certain research impact indicators (e.g., number of publications is frequently used but much more likely to be used for institutional reasons than personal or professional reasons); c.) faculty feel that research assessment is most fair at the department level and least fair at the university level; and d.) faculty do not feel positively towards their research being assessed for the allocation of university funding. Published on 2020-07-07 09:01:55
Open Access journal
[3 journals]
