Scholarly Twitter metrics: How, when and what does the Twittersphere tweet about science?
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Invited talk at EBBC6, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), 18 July 2018 http://www.ebbc.inf.br/
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Scholarly Twitter metrics: How, when and what does the Twittersphere tweet about science?
- 1. Scholarly Twitter Metrics Stefanie Haustein stefanie.haustein@uottawa.ca | @stefhaustein | #ScholCommLab How, when and what does the Twittersphere tweet about science?
- 2. Juan Pablo Alperin co-director Stefanie Haustein co-director Cecilia Rozemblum PhD student SFU Rémi Toupin PhD student UQAM Asura Enkhbayar PhD student data scientist SFU Alison Kealey research assistant UOttawa Tristan Lamonica research assistant UOttawa Carol Muñoz Nieves research assistant SFU Who we are ScholCommLab.ca/People
- 3. Florence Millerand associate professor UQAM Katherine Reilly associate professor SFU Collaborators Former members Vincent Larivière associate professor UMontreal Germana Barata visiting faculty Fereshteh Didegah postdoctoral researcher David Moscrop postdoctoral researcher Lesley Schimanski lecturer SFU Who we are ScholCommLab.ca/People
- 4. Outline www.altmetric.com/blog/ • Twitter in scholarly communication • Dataset and methods • Journal articles on Twitter: What kind of articles are shared on Twitter? Where do tweets come from? How are articles on Twitter diffused? When are scholarly articles tweeted? Who tweets about scholarly articles? • What does this mean for tweet-based altmetrics?
- 5. Twitter uptake https://www.statista.com/statistics/242606/number-of-active-twitter-users-in-selected-countries/ Twitter users per country Number of users 2018 (in million) Percentage of population
- 6. Twitter in academia Sugimoto, C. R., Work, S., Larivière, V., & Haustein, S. (2017). Scholarly use of social media and altmetrics: A review of the literature. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. doi:10.1002/asi.23833 Van Noorden, R.. (2014). Online collaboration: Scientists and the social network. Nature, 512(7513), 126-129. doi: 10.1038/512126a • 10-15% of academics use Twitter • Used for informational needs: • Post work content • Follow discussions • Discover papers • Used in social context: • Discover peers • Criticism and reluctance: • Shallow medium “pointless babble” • Blurred boundaries
- 7. s Dataset and methods Tweets linking to journal articles Metadata Documentidentifier Twitter Facebook Blogs News Google+ … DOI Metadata Citations sTweet
- 8. Dataset and methods Number of journal articles 2016 Articles published in journals covered by the Web of Science
- 9. Dataset and methods Brazilian articles per NSF discipline Articles with a DOI published by an author with Brazilian address (n=39,717)
- 10. Dataset and methods Altmetric Twitter data • Collection of tweets to scientific documents since 2012 • DOI or other common document identifier (PMID, arXiv ID) • Altmetric database • Until June 2016 24 million tweets, 2.6 million users 36% of 2015 WoS papers: 3.96 million tweets, 601,290 users • Until October 2017 42.5 million tweets, 4.1 million users 33% of Brazilian 2016 articles: 104,638 tweets, 48,332 users
- 11. What? Twitter coverage and density Brazilian articles with a DOI per NSF discipline (n=39,717) 2.6 0.2 1.6 0.4 0.3 1.5 1.2 6.2 4.4 2.2 3.7 1.0 2.6 0.5 0.1 Twitter coverage Twitter density
- 12. What? Top tweeted Brazilian articles doi Tweets Users 10.1126/science.aaf2693 1,211 (#1) 257 (#44) 10.1002/bjs.10151 1,014 (#2) 356 (#29) 10.1038/srep22170 1,011 (#3) 171 (#70) 10.1056/NEJMoa1602412 1,001 (#4) 839 (#2) 10.1080/15548627.2015.1100356 925 (#5) 895 (#1) 10.1016/S0140-6736(16)31467-2 850 (#6) 746 (#3) 10.1038/srep37855 746 (#7) 632 (#4) 10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.7431 724 (#8) 624 (#5) 10.1001/jamaoncol.2016.0386 723 (#9) 540 (#13) 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2016.02.023 720 (#10) 607 (#7)
- 13. Where? Tweets per country Tweets captured by Altmetric until June 2016 with geotag
- 14. Where? Geographic location of tweets to Brazilian articles Top cities Tweets Users London 2,620 1,175 Oxford 937 208 Washington, DC 906 363 Guaranta do Norte 772 281 Madrid 648 358 San Francisco 571 234 Melbourne 558 286 Boston 543 265 Sydney 522 264 Toledo 521 222 Cambridge 520 229 Toronto 517 316 Honolulu 510 19 … ... … São Paulo 488 196 Top countries Tweets USA 18,323 UK 10,610 Spain 3,670 Brazil 3,085 Canada 2,601 Australia 2,401 France 1,759 Japan 1,486 Germany 995 Mexico 923 Netherlands 905 Switzerland 742 Italy 718 Colombia 645
- 15. Tweets per Brazilian region and city Where? Top countries Tweets Southeast 112,829 No location 45,176 South 30,222 Northeast 21,924 Central-West 20,025 North 8,602 Top cities Tweets São Paulo 47,128 Rio de Janeiro 27,286 Porto Alegre 15,148 Brasília 12,616 Belo Horizonte 8,530
- 16. How? Retweets Tweets to WoS 2015 papers (06/2016)
- 17. How? Hashtags Hashtags in all tweets (06/2016) Hashtags to WoS 2015 papers (06/2016)
- 18. How? Hashtags Timeline of tweets and most popular hashtags for Adams, Wright, & Lohr (1996) doi: 10.1037/0021-843X.105.3.440
- 19. How? Emojis
- 20. How? Emojis in tweets to Brazilian articles Tweets in Altmetric (10/2017) linking to WoS 2016 article with Brazilian addresses • Liking • Pointing • Sports • Reading • Faces
- 21. How? Emojis in tweets from Brazil Tweets in Altmetric (10/2017) with geocoded country=Brazil • Sports • Pointing • Liking • Reading • Faces
- 22. How? Top 10 emojis from different countries Tweets in Altmetric (10/2017) with geocoded country
- 24. When? Tweet span Tweets captured by Altmetric 2012⎼2015
- 25. When? Seasonal patterns Tweets captured by Altmetric 2012⎼2015
- 26. When? Weekday patterns Tweets captured by Altmetric 2012⎼2015
- 28. Who? Number of tweets and articles per user Users tweeting Brazilian articles with a DOI published in 2016 (n=48,332) arXiv_trend par_papers banbarori5 AnestesiaF BlackPhysicists psych2evidence uranus_2 LotusOak SurgeryScience joefirth7 PLOSBiology jsexmed LGBTjournal 🇧🇷
- 29. Who? Most productive users Tweets captured by Altmetric (06/2016)
- 30. So what? • What? • One third of recent papers on Twitter • Biomedical and social science publications • Where? • Anglophone North American and European countries • Global South underrepresented, some countries blocked • How? • Majority of tweet are retweets → diffusion, not discussion • Hashtags increase audience and provide context • Emojis are used infrequently
- 31. So what? • When? • Immediately after publication → rapid diffusion • Articles with long tweet spans are exception • Who? • Academics, journals or publishers, bots or cyborgs • Small fraction of tweets hints at public engagement Twitter ≠ societal impact Counts → context Differentiating types of users (e.g., flagging bots) Various levels of engagement (discussion > diffusion)
- 32. More? Book chapter Haustein, S. (in press). Scholarly Twitter Metrics. In: Glänzel, W., Moed, H., Schmoch, U., & Thelwall, M., Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators, Springer. arxiv.org/abs/1806.02201 Blog posts on Altmetric.com Intro: Twitter in scholarly communication What: Uncitable research is infinitely more tweetable Where: It ain’t where you’re from, it’s where you’re tweeting How: RT @PLOSONE #cancer #health #openaccess When: Never put off till tomorrow, what you can tweet today Who: Not sure if scientist or just Twitter bot Slides from today’s talk slideshare.com/StefanieHaustein 📖 💻
- 33. stefanie.haustein@uottawa.ca | @stefhaustein | #ScholCommLab Obrigada!
Editor's Notes
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- US, Japan, UK Brazil in 6th position in terms of absolute users: 10.1 million active users in 2018 In terms of percentage Twitter is particular popular in Saudi Arabia, Japan, UK Very popular for shared experiences, online or in person: Royal wedding, World Cup, concerts, conferences
- In academia: less common, most studies find 10-15% but disciplinary differences Informational use: Finding information, following discussions (conferences), stay up-to-date on what’s happening, latest literature Social use: Finding a community, collaborator or audience, networking, increasing visibility »hype » medium in academia, as everyone knows it, but only a small percentage uses it for work Pscheida et al.: German professors and university researchers: 97% knew Twitter, 15% used it, 10% used it for professional reasons 13% regular visitors among 3,027 STM researchers (van Noorden, 2014) Concerns and certain reluctance to use Twitter in academia Perceived as shallow medium, used to communicate »pointless babble » Blurred boundaries between professional and private activity, tweets taken out of context
- To analyze scholarly Twitter metrics we obtain tweets from Altmetric.com Bibliographic metadata from the Web of Science Connection via DOI
- For the analysis today: All publications, DT article published in WoS journals Year 2016, for recent publications Brazil published around 40,000 articles ranking in 13th position, behind Spain, before the Netherlands We only consider articles with a DOI, which we need to captured tweets
- On the level of NSF disciplines, the largest publication output in Clinical Medicine and Biology On the level of NSF specialties, Brazilian authors publish most in: Agricult & Food Science 2,495 (6% of 2016 articles) General Biomedical Research 1,735 (4%) Botany 1,678 (4%) Materials Science 1,256 (3%)
- #1 tweets: « NAD+ (Nicotinamide adenine dinucleatide=coenzyme) repletion improves mitochondrial and stem cell function and enhances life span in mice » Anti-aging, lots of news and blog posts President of a pharmacy company tweets: « What a novel idea, why didn’t I think of it » #1users: « Guidelines for the use and interpretations of assays for monitoring authophagy » (2016) 8 pages of author names, 21 pages of affiliations Jokes about the number of authors A few medical tweets Scored highest for users and tweets: « Zika Virus Infection in Pregnant Women in Rio de Janeiro », New England Journal of Medicine December 2016, preliminary version online in March 2016
- Geotag function, not default: 5% of tweets Gnip, Twitter data service enriches geo data by using the information provided in Twitter bio 58% of Altmetric Tweets information on the country level: US: 20% UK: 11% Canada, Australia and Spain (3% each) Heavy anglophone and North American and European bias Global South underrepresented, but Brazil amongst the top in the South
- When we look at Brazilian articles 2016: Reflects the anglophone bias US, UK, Canada: London, Oxford, Washington DC, San Francisco, Boston, Cambridge, Toronto Madrid and Toledo, Spain Melbourne, Sydney (Australia) Guaranta do Norte seems to be the city in Brazil with the largest number of tweets However: reveals problem with data quality: whenever the city cannot be determined, it serves as a placeholder, as it seems to be the geographic midpoint – cleaned all the data First Brazilian City is Sao Paolo in 14th place In blue: two places where the number users and number of tweets diverge: Oxford with 208 usrs and Honolulu with 19 tweets – very active accounts often bots, automated
- Normalize by population for relative Twitter activity, particularly interesting per discipline or journal or papers authored by an institution City per region: Southeast: São Paulo 47,128, Rio de Janeiro 27,286, Belo Horizonte 8,530 South: Porto Alegre 15,148, Curitiba 5,032, Florianópolis 2,458 Northeast: Salvador 3,994, Recife 3,811, Natal 2,740 Central-West: Brasília 12,616; Cocalinho 2,590; Goiânia 2,295; Campo Grande 1,229 North: Cumaru do Norte 3,191, Belém 2,367; Manaus 1,288
- Half of all tweets to WoS 2015 are RTs Differences between journals Presence of journal or publisher accounts among the most active users
- Study is the paper that stayed alive longest on Twitter, almost five years 2,436 tweets from 2,048 users Starts to be shared under LGBT hashtag, Gets involved in Australian politics, Canadian politics Religious contexts Jim Wells: The Member of Legislative Assembly said the National Trust's presence at Belfast's Pride parade last year, and its initial decision to force volunteers to wear Pride rainbow badges, were among the reasons for his ending his membership.
- Only a very small fraction of tweets contain emojis, increases up to 1.6% in 2017 but only 0.7% of al 42.5 million tweets captured by Altmetric
- Liking: thumbs up, heart, applause pointing right or down (arrow or hand) Sports: flexing, weight lifter, cycling, running, swimming Reading: books, paper, eyes Smily faces: thinking, scared, winking, smiling Female sign What is unique for countries Brazil: sports (weight lifting, swimming, cycling, flexing) Germany: celebrating, microscope UK: rocket Japan: planets and satellite UK and Germany use more smily faces
- Tweets from Brazil: sports even more popular
- Comparing different countries: What all/several have in common: Pointing Liking: thumbs up, heart, applause Reading, access: books, paper, lock Male and female sign What is unique for countries Brazil: sports (weight lifting, swimming, cycling, flexing) Germany: celebrating, microscope UK: rocket Japan: planets and satellite UK and Germany use more smiley faces
- Three temporal indicators to analyze when tweets appear Problems of computing half-life and delay because of publication dates Year is not sufficient Problem of different versions, online publication vs. journal issue, “print” publication Life span of social media events: Tweet span is the length of the period between the very first and last tweet per document – independent of when it is published
- Half-life: 0 days More than half of all tweets stayed on Twitter for less than one day All the way on the right with over 1,800 days is the homophobia paper (above)
- Altmetric
- The most active users are mostly automated or semi-automated: bots or cyborgs arXiv or other paper feeds: RSS for new papers, article title and link Tweet 30 to 70 times a day, top 5 more than 50,000 tweets over years, sometimes just one month Followers: none to several thousands
- So what? What does this all mean for tweets in the context of altmetrics? The majority of papers are not mentioned on Twitter – does not mean they are not used or useful Disciplinary differences: biomedical and social sciences are overrepresented, hard sciences are hardly discussed on Twitter Clear bias towards anglophone countries North America and Europe Some countries like Iran and China are blocked, the global South is underrepresented With half of tweets being retweets, Twitter is not used for in-depth discussions but primarily to diffuse research—academics’ main motivation to use Twitter.
- Short half-lives, delays and tweet spans point to rapid diffusion; seeing users engage with articles weeks or months after publication is rare. Only a very small fraction of tweets indicates engagement by non-academic users, PhDs, journal and publishers are majority Bots are most active users > not impact Twitter metrics do not measure societal impact Twitter needs to be approached critically and in a nuanced way with regard to its user population and types of use. Counts: done with counts, no more correlations Instead: context: time lines, hashtags, users Hashtags offer a crowdsourced view on tweet and publication content and enrich tweet counts by adding context and highlighting changes over time.