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Why highly cited articles are not highly tweeted? A biology case

Author

Listed:
  • Liwei Zhang

    (Dalian University of Technology)

  • Jue Wang

    (Nanyang Technological University)

Abstract

Altmetrics is an emerging topic that has generated much interest. Most of the studies, however, have focused on the comparison of altemetric indicators with traditional citation metrics and few have explored the factors influencing altmetric performance. This study investigates the dissemination pattern of scientific articles on social medial, and is particularly focused on highly tweeted articles and highly cited articles. Based on bibliometric and altmetric data collected for over 40,000 articles in the field of biology, we found that the timing of tweets and the type of Twitter accounts affect the amount of attention that a scientific publication receives on social media. Articles with a large number of tweets tend to be the ones receiving immediate social media exposure and are often tweeted by journal associated organization accounts or other individual accounts with a large number of followers. By contrast, highly cited articles in general are neither tweeted timely nor promoted by their respective journal accounts.

Suggested Citation

  • Liwei Zhang & Jue Wang, 2018. "Why highly cited articles are not highly tweeted? A biology case," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(1), pages 495-509, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:117:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-018-2876-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-018-2876-6
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    Cited by:

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    3. Yang, Siluo & Zheng, Mengxue & Yu, Yonghao & Wolfram, Dietmar, 2021. "Are Altmetric.com scores effective for research impact evaluation in the social sciences and humanities?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1).
    4. Liwei Zhang & Jue Wang, 2021. "What affects publications’ popularity on Twitter?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(11), pages 9185-9198, November.
    5. Jianhua Hou & Hao Li & Yang Zhang, 2023. "Altmetrics-based sleeping beauties: necessity or just a supplement?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(10), pages 5477-5506, October.
    6. Liwei Zhang & Liang Ma, 2024. "Different open access routes, varying societal impacts: evidence from the Royal Society biological journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(6), pages 3407-3431, June.
    7. Jianhua Hou & Hao Li & Yang Zhang, 2020. "Identifying the princes base on Altmetrics: An awakening mechanism of sleeping beauties from the perspective of social media," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-28, November.
    8. Maureen McKelvey & Bastian Rake, 2020. "Exploring scientific publications by firms: what are the roles of academic and corporate partners for publications in high reputation or high impact journals?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(3), pages 1323-1360, March.

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