Twitter Predicts Citation Rates of Ecological Research

Abstract

The relationship between traditional metrics of research impact (e.g., number of citations) and alternative metrics (altmetrics) such as Twitter activity are of great interest, but remain imprecisely quantified. We used generalized linear mixed modeling to estimate the relative effects of Twitter activity, journal impact factor, and time since publication on Web of Science citation rates of 1,599 primary research articles from 20 ecology journals published from 2012–2014. We found a strong positive relationship between Twitter activity (i.e., the number of unique tweets about an article) and number of citations. Twitter activity was a more important predictor of citation rates than 5-year journal impact factor. Moreover, Twitter activity was not driven by journal impact factor; the ‘highest-impact’ journals were not necessarily the most discussed online. The effect of Twitter activity was only about a fifth as strong as time since publication; accounting for this confounding factor was critical for estimating the true effects of Twitter use. Articles in impactful journals can become heavily cited, but articles in journals with lower impact factors can generate considerable Twitter activity and also become heavily cited. Authors may benefit from establishing a strong social media presence, but should not expect research to become highly cited solely through social media promotion. Our research demonstrates that altmetrics and traditional metrics can be closely related, but not identical. We suggest that both altmetrics and traditional citation rates can be useful metrics of research impact.

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“…Major international conferences such as the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons (ASCRS) Annual Scientific Meeting and the Annual Scientific Meeting of the European Society of Coloproctology (ESCP) had their own conference hashtags, #ASCRS17 and #ESCP17 respectively. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that conference-related tweets can predict future citations in journals [16,17]. Twitter also made an impact on the surgical community and society at large with the 2017 #ilooklikeasurgeon movement, which encouraged women and other minority groups in the male-dominated profession to be visible by posting photos of themselves with the aforementioned hashtag.…”

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“…It is worth noting that science communication is being recognized as part of a broader set of skills and activities necessary to be relevant as a scientist (see Chapman et al 2015;Peoples et al 2016). We acknowledge we are neither professionally trained in science communication nor scholars of science Box 1.…”

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