Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Scholarly Twitter Metrics

  • Chapter
Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators

Part of the book series: Springer Handbooks ((SHB))

Abstract

Twitter has unarguably been the most popular among the data sources that form the basis of so-called altmetrics. Tweets to scholarly documents have been heralded as both early indicators of citations and measures of societal impact. This chapter provides an overview of Twitter activity as the basis for scholarly metrics from a critical point of view and equally describes the potential and limitations of scholarly Twitter metrics. By reviewing the literature on Twitter in scholarly communication and analyzing 24 million tweets linking to scholarly documents, it aims to provide a basic understanding of what tweets can and cannot measure in the context of research evaluation. Going beyond the limited explanatory power of low correlations between tweets and citations, this chapter considers what types of scholarly documents are popular on Twitter, and how, when and by whom they are diffused in order to understand what tweets to scholarly documents measure. Although the chapter is not able to solve the problems associated with the creation of meaningful metrics from social media, it highlights particular issues and aims to provide the basis for advanced scholarly Twitter metrics.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 299.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 379.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • L. Bornmann: Scientific revolution in scientometrics: The broadening of impact from citation to societal. In: Theories of Informetrics and Scholarly Communication, ed. by C.R. Sugimoto (de Gruyter Mouton, Berlin 2016)

    Google Scholar 

  • B. Cronin: Metrics à la mode, J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 64(6), 1091–1091 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein: Grand challenges in altmetrics: Heterogeneity, data quality and dependencies, Scientometrics 108(1), 413–423 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • J. Priem: Altmetrics. In: Beyond Bibliometrics: Harnessing Multidimensional Indicators of Performance, ed. by B. Cronin, C.R. Sugimoto (MIT Press, Cambridge 2014) pp. 263–287

    Google Scholar 

  • C.R. Sugimoto, S. Work, V. Larivière, S. Haustein: Scholarly use of social media and altmetrics: A review of the literature, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 68(9), 2037–2062 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • G. Eysenbach: Can tweets predict citations? Metrics of social impact based on Twitter and correlation with traditional metrics of scientific impact, J. Med. Int. Res. 13(4), e123–e123 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  • R. Costas, Z. Zahedi, P. Wouters: Do “altmetrics” correlate with citations? Extensive comparison of altmetric indicators with citations from a multidisciplinary perspective, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 66(10), 2003–2019 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein, I. Peters, C.R. Sugimoto, M. Thelwall, V. Larivière: Tweeting biomedicine: an analysis of tweets and citations in the biomedical literature, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 65(4), 656–669 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • G. Miller: Social scientists wade into the tweet stream, Science 333(6051), 1814–1815 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • R. Rogers: Debanalising twitter. The transformation of an object of study. In: Twitter and Society, ed. by K. Weller, A. Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, C. Puschmann (Peter Lang, New York 2014) pp. ix–xxvi

    Google Scholar 

  • K. Weller, A. Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, C. Puschmann: Twitter and society: An introduction. In: Twitter and Society, ed. by K. Weller, A. Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, C. Puschmann (Peter Lang, New York 2014) pp. xxiv–xxxviii

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • I. Rowlands, D. Nicholas, B. Russell, N. Canty, A. Watkinson: Social media use in the research workflow, Learn. Publ. 24(3), 183–195 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • R. Van Noorden: Online collaboration: Scientists and the social network, Nature 512(7513), 126–129 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • J. Priem, K.L. Costello: How and why scholars cite on Twitter, Proc. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 47(1), 1–4 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein, R. Costas, V. Larivière: Characterizing social media metrics of scholarly papers: The effect of document properties and collaboration patterns, PLoS One 10(3), e0120495 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • N. Hall: The Kardashian index: A measure of discrepant social media profile for scientists, Genome Biol. 15(7), 424–424 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • N. Desrochers, A. Paul-Hus, S. Haustein, R. Costas, P. Mongeon, A. Quan-Haase, T.D. Bowman, J. Pecoskie, A. Tsou, V. Larivière: Authorship, citations, acknowledgments and visibility in social media: Symbolic capital in the multifaceted reward system of science, Soc. Sc. Inf. (2018), https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018417752089

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • B. Cronin: The evolving indicator space (iSpace), J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 64(8), 1523–1525 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • J. Priem, H. Piwowar, B.M. Hemminger: Altmetrics in the wild: Using social media to explore scholarly impact, arXiv Print (2012), 1–17, https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.4745

  • M. Duggan, N. B. Ellison, C. Lampe, A. Lenhart, M. Madden: Demographics of Key Social Networking Platforms (2015), http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/09/demographics-of-key-social-networking-platforms-2/

  • C. Puschmann: (Micro)Blogging science? Notes on potentials and constraints of new forms of scholarly communication. In: Opening Science, ed. by S. Bartling, S. Friesike (Springer, Cham 2014) pp. 89–106, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00026-8

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • F.J. Grajales, S. Sheps, K. Ho, H. Novak-Lauscher, G. Eysenbach: Social media: A review and tutorial of applications in medicine and health care, J. Med. Internet Res. 16(2), e13–e13 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • D. Boyd, S. Golder, G. Lotan: Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter. In: 43rd Hawaii Int. Conf. Syst. Sci. IEEE (2010) pp. 1–10, https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2010.412

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • A. Bruns, H. Moe: Structural layers of communication on Twitter. In: Twitter and Society, ed. by K. Weller, A. Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, C. Puschmann (Peter Lang, New York 2014) pp. 15–28

    Google Scholar 

  • G. Veletsianos: Higher education scholars' participation and practices on Twitter, J. Comput. Assist. Learn. 28(4), 336–349 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • M. Nentwich: Das Web 2.0 in der wissenschaftlichen Praxis. In: Digitale Wissenschaftskommunikation–Formate und ihre Nutzung, Giessen (2011) pp. 35–53, http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2011/8227/pdf/DigitaleWissenschaftskommunikation_2011.pdf

    Google Scholar 

  • A. Osterrieder: The value and use of social media as communication tool in the plant sciences, Plant Methods 9(1), 26–26 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • N. Pearce, M. Weller, E. Scanlon, M. Ashleigh: Digital scholarship considered: How new technologies could transform academic work, In Educ. 16(1), 33–44 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  • D. Zhao, M.B. Rosson: How and why people Twitter: The role that micro-blogging plays in informal communication at work. In: Proc. ACM 2009 Int. Conf. Support. Group Work, GROUP '09 (ACM Press, New York 2009), https://doi.org/10.1145/1531674.1531710

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • J. Carpenter, L. Wetheridge, S. Tanner, N. Smith: Researchers of Tomorrow: The Research Behaviour of Generation Y Doctoral Students (2012), http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/reports/2012/researchers-of-tomorrow

  • F. Gu, G. Widén-Wulff: Scholarly communication and possible changes in the context of social media, Electron. Libr. 29(6), 762–776 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • D. Pscheida, S. Albrecht, S. Herbst, C. Minet, T. Köhler: Nutzung von Social Media und onlinebasierten Anwendungen in der Wissenschaft (ZBW – Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften – Leibniz‑Informationszentrum Wirtschaft, Kiel 2013), http://www.qucosa.de/fileadmin/data/qucosa/documents/13296/Science20_Datenreport_2013_PDF_A.pdf

    Google Scholar 

  • R. Kelly: Twitter Study, White Paper (Pear Analytics, San Antonio 2009), http://pearanalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Twitter-Study-August-2009.pdf

    Google Scholar 

  • V. Miller: New media, networking and phatic culture, Converg. Int. J. Res. New Media Technol. 14(4), 387–400 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • K. Weller, R. Dornstädter, R. Freimanis, R. N. Klein, M. Perez: Social software in academia: Three studies on users' acceptance of Web 2.0 Services. (2010) http://journal.webscience.org/360/2/websci10_submission_62.pdf

  • D. Grande, S.E. Gollust, M. Pany, J. Seymour, A. Goss, A. Kilaru, Z. Meisel: Translating research for health policy: Researchers' perceptions and use of social media, Health Aff. 33(7), 1278–1285 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • M.W. Wilson, S. Starkweather: Web presence of academic geographers: A generational divide?, Prof. Geogr. 66(1), 73–81 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • C. Tenopir, R. Volentine, D.W. King: Social media and scholarly reading, Online Inf. Rev. 37(2), 193–216 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • R.N. Procter, R. Williams, J. Stewart, M. Poschen, H. Snee, A. Voss, M. Asgari-Targhi: If You Build It, Will They Come? How Researchers Perceive and Use Web 2.0 (Research Network Information, London 2010), http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/56246

    Google Scholar 

  • D. Ponte, J. Simon: Scholarly Communication 2.0: Exploring Researchers' Opinions on Web 2.0 for Scientific Knowledge Creation, Evaluation and Dissemination, Ser. Rev. 37(3), 149–156 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • T.D. Bowman: Investigating the use of Affordances and Framing Techniques by Scholars to Manage Personal and Professional Impressions on Twitter, Dissertation (Indiana Univ., Bloomington 2015)

    Google Scholar 

  • S. Loeb, C.E. Bayne, C. Frey, B.J. Davies, T.D. Averch, H.H. Woo, B. Stork, M.R. Cooperberg, S.E. Eggener: Use of social media in urology: Data from the American Urological Association (AUA), BJU International 113(6), 993–998 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein, I. Peters, J. Bar-Ilan, J. Priem, H. Shema, J. Terliesner: Coverage and adoption of altmetrics sources in the bibliometric community, Scientometrics 101(2), 1145–1163 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • E.S. Darling, D. Shiffman, I. Côté, J.A. Drew: The role of Twitter in the life cycle of a scientific publication, Ideas Ecol. Evol. 6, 32–43 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  • T. Desai, A. Shariff, A. Shariff, M. Kats, X. Fang, C. Christiano, M. Ferris: Tweeting the Meeting: An in-depth analysis of Twitter activity at Kidney Week 2011, PLoS One 7(7), 1–9 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • T. Desai, M. Patwardhan, H. Coore: Factors that contribute to social media influence within an Internal Medicine Twitter learning community, F1000Research 3, 120–120 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • J. Priem, K. Costello, T. Dzuba: Prevalence and use of Twitter among scholars. In: Metrics 2011 Symp. Informetr. Scientometr. Res (2012), https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.104629

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • S. Work, S. Haustein, T.D. Bowman, V. Larivière: Social Media in Scholarly Communication. A Review of the Literature and Empirical Analysis of Twitter Use by SSHRC Doctoral Award Recipients. Study commissioned by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  • K.C. Chretien, J. Azar, T. Kind: Physicians on Twitter, JAMA 305(6), 566–568 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • K. Holmberg, T.D. Bowman, S. Haustein, I. Peters: Astrophysicists' conversational connections on twitter, PLoS One 9(8), e106086–e106086 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • K. Holmberg, M. Thelwall: Disciplinary differences in Twitter scholarly communication, Scientometrics 101(2), 1027–1042 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • J. Bar-Ilan, S. Haustein, I. Peters, J. Priem, H. Shema, J. Terliesner: Beyond citations: Scholars' visibility on the social Web. In: Proc. 17th Int. Conf. Sci. Technol. Indic. Montreal Canada 58 Sept 2012, Vol. 52900 (2012) pp. 98–109, https://arxiv.org/abs/1205.5611

    Google Scholar 

  • S. Barthel, S. Tönnies, B. Köhncke, P. Siehndel, W.-T. Balke: What does Twitter measure? Influence of diverse user groups in altmetrics. In: Proc. 15th ACM/IEEE-CE Jt. Conf. Dig. Libr., Knoxville (ACM, New York 2015) pp. 119–128, https://doi.org/10.1145/2756406.2756913

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Q. Ke, Y.-Y. Ahn, C.R. Sugimoto: A systematic identification and analysis of scientists on Twitter, PLoS One 12(4), e0175368 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • N.K. Sharma, S. Ghosh, F. Benevenuto, N. Ganguly, K. Gummadi: Inferring who-is-who in the Twitter social network. In: Proc. 2012 ACM Workshop Workshop Online Soc. Netw. WOSN '12 (ACM Press, New York 2012) p. 55, https://doi.org/10.1145/2342549.2342563

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • A.T. Hadgu, R. Jäschke: Identifying and analyzing researchers on twitter (ACM, New York 2014) pp. 23–32, https://doi.org/10.1145/2615569.2615676

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • J.P. Alperin: Moving beyond counts: A method for surveying Twitter users. In: Altmetrics15: 5 Years In, What Do We Know? (2015), http://altmetrics.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/altmetrics15_paper_3.pdf

    Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein, T.D. Bowman, R. Costas: “Communities of attention” around scientific publications: Who is tweeting about scientific papers? In: Soc. Media Soc. 2015 Int. Conf., Toronto (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein, R. Costas: Identifying Twitter audiences: Who is tweeting about scientific papers? In: Metrics 2015 ASIS&T SIG/MET Workshop, St. Louis at the Arch (2015), https://www.asist.org/SIG/SIGMET/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/sigmet2015_paper_11.pdf

    Google Scholar 

  • A. Tsou, T.D. Bowman, A. Ghazinejad, C.R. Sugimoto: Who tweets about science? In: Proc. 2015 Int. Soc. Scientometr. Informetr., Istanbul (2015) pp. 95–100, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/81fe/8b63188cf25648a7c592bc6b5457fee3c101.pdf?_ga=1.184338726.1264550827.1478885332

    Google Scholar 

  • L. Bonetta: Should you be tweeting?, Cell 139(3), 452–453 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • A. Sopan, P.J. Rey, B. Butler, B. Shneiderman: Monitoring academic conferences: Real-time visualization and retrospective analysis of backchannel conversations. In: 2012 Int. Conf. Soc. Inf., Washington DC (2012) pp. 62–69, https://doi.org/10.1109/SocialInformatics.2012.20

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • K. Weller, E. Dröge, C. Puschmann: Citation analysis in twitter: Approaches for defining and measuring information flows within Tweets during scientific conferences. In: Proc. ESWC2011 Workshop “Making Sense of Microposts”: Big Things Come in Small Packages, Vol. 718 (Heraklion, Heraklion 2011) pp. 1–12, http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-718/msm2011_proceedings.pdf

    Google Scholar 

  • B.A. Chaudhry, L.M. Glode, M. Gillman, R.S. Miller: Trends in Twitter use by physicians at the American society of clinical oncology annual meeting, 2010 and 2011, J. Oncol. Pract. 8(3), 173–178 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • D.R. McKendrick, G.P. Cumming, A.J. Lee: Increased use of twitter at a medical conference: A report and a review of the educational opportunities, J. Med. Internet Res. 14(6), e176 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • R. Mishori, B. Levy, B. Donvan: Twitter use at a Family Medicine Conference: Analyzing #STFM13, Fam. Med. 46(8), 608–614 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  • A. Cochran, L.S. Kao, N.J. Gusani, J.W. Suliburk, B.C. Nwomeh: Use of Twitter to document the 2013 Academic Surgical Congress, J. Surg. Res. 190(1), 36–40 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • C. Ferguson, S.C. Inglis, P.J. Newton, P.J.S. Cripps, P.S. Macdonald, P.M. Davidson: Social media: A tool to spread information: A case study analysis of Twitter conversation at the Cardiac Society of Australia & New Zealand 61st Annual Scientific Meeting 2013, Collegian 21(2), 89–93 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • C.M. Hawkins, R. Duszak, J.V. Rawson: Social media in radiology: Early trends in Twitter microblogging at radiology's largest international meeting, JACR 11(4), 387–390 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  • A. Jalali, T. Wood: Analyzing online impact of canadian conference of medical education through tweets, Educ. Med. J. 5(3), e110–e111 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • J. Letierce, A. Passant, J. Breslin, S. Decker: Understanding how Twitter is used to spread scientific messages (2010) http://journal.webscience.org/314/

  • W. Reinhardt, M. Ebner, G. Beham, C. Costa: How people are using Twitter during conferences. In: Creativity and Innovation Competencies on the Web, Proc. 5th EduMedia Conf., Salzburg, ed. by V. Hornung-Prähauser, M. Luckmann (2009) pp. 145–156, http://lamp.tu-graz.ac.at/~i203/ebner/publication/09_edumedia.pdf

    Google Scholar 

  • J.-H. Schmidt: Twitter and the rise of personal publics. In: Twitter and Society, ed. by K. Weller, A. Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, C. Puschmann (Peter Lang, New York 2014) pp. 3–12

    Google Scholar 

  • M. Baym: The perils and pleasures of tweeting with fans. In: Twitter and Society, ed. by K. Weller, A. Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, C. Puschmann (Peter Lang, New York 2014)

    Google Scholar 

  • S. Harrington: Tweeting about the telly: Live TV, audiences and social media. In: Twitter and Society, ed. by K. Weller, A. Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, C. Puschmann (Peter Lang, New York 2014) pp. 237–247

    Google Scholar 

  • E.Y.L. Leung, D. Siassakos, K.S. Khan: Journal Club via social media: Authors take note of the impact of #BlueJC, BJOG Int. J. Obstet. Gynaecol. 122(8), 1042–1044 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • N. Mehta, T. Flickinger: The times they are a-changin': Academia, social media and the JGIM Twitter Journal Club, J. Gen. Int. Med. 29(10), 1317–1318 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • I.A. Thangasamy, M. Leveridge, B.J. Davies, A. Finelli, B. Stork, H.H. Woo: International Urology Journal Club via Twitter: 12-Month Experience, Eur. Urol. 66(1), 112–117 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • J.M. Topf, S. Hiremath: Social media, medicine and the modern journal club, Int. Rev. Psychiatr. 27(2), 147–154 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • T. Whitburn, C. Walshe, K.E. Sleeman: International palliative care journal club on Twitter: Experience so far, BMJ Support. Palliat. Care 5(1), 120 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • M.N. Kamel Boulos, P.F. Anderson: Preliminary survey of leading general medicine journals' use of Facebook and Twitter, J. Can. Health Libr. Assoc. 33(2), 38–47 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • G.J. Nason, F. O'Kelly, M.E. Kelly, N. Phelan, R.P. Manecksha, N. Lawrentschuk, D.G. Murphy: The emerging use of Twitter by urological journals: Use of Twitter by urological journals, BJU International 115(3), 486–490 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • R. Micieli, J.A. Micieli: Twitter as a tool for ophthalmologists, Can. J. Ophthalmol. 47(5), 410–413 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • T. Kortelainen, M. Katvala: “Everything is plentiful–Except attention”. Attention data of scientific journals on social web tools, J. Informetr. 6(4), 661–668 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • M. Amir, B.P. Sampson, D. Endly, J.M. Tamai, J. Henley, A.C. Brewer, J.H. Dunn, C.A. Dunnick, R.P. Dellavalle: Social networking sites: Emerging and essential tools for communication in dermatology, JAMA Dermatology 150(1), 56–60 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • M. Zedda, A. Barbaro: Adoption of web 2.0 tools among STM publishers. How social are scientific journals?, Journal EAHIL 11(1), 9–12 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  • N. Friedrich, T.D. Bowman, W.G. Stock, S. Haustein: Adapting sentiment analysis for tweets linking to scientific papers. In: Proc. 15th Int. Soc. Scientometr. Informetr. Conf., Istanbul (2015) pp. 107–108

    Google Scholar 

  • M. Thelwall, A. Tsou, S. Weingart, K. Holmberg, S. Haustein: Tweeting links to academic articles, Cybermetr. Int. J. Scientometr. Informetr. Bibliometr. 17(1), 1–8 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  • C. Woolston: Potential flaws in genomics paper scrutinized on Twitter, Nature 7553(521), 397 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nature Publishing Group: Author Insights 2015 survey. Figshare (2015), https://figshare.com/articles/Author_Insights_2015_survey/1425362

  • P.O. Seglen: Citations and journal impact factors: Questionable indicators of research quality, Allergy 52(11), 1050–1056 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • R. Van Noorden: Brazilian citation scheme outed, Nature 500(7464), 510–511 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Association of American University Professors: Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications (2013), retrieved from https://www.aaup.org/file/Academic%20Freedom%20%26%20Electronic%20Communications.pdf

  • B. Herman: Steven Salaita Twitter scandal: University offers settlement, but free speech questions linger, International Business Times (2014), http://www.ibtimes.com/steven-salaita-twitter-scandal-university-offers-settlement-free-speech-questions-linger-1678854

  • L.A. Pasquini, N. Evangelopoulos: Organizational identity, meaning, and values: analysis of social media guideline and policy documents. In: Proc. 2015 Int. Conf. Soc. Media Soc. SMSociety '15 (ACM, New York 2015) pp. 1–5, https://doi.org/10.1145/2789187.2789198

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • J. Pomerantz, C. Hank, C.R. Sugimoto: The state of social media policies in higher education, PLoS One 10(5), e0127485 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • R. Kimmons, G. Veletsianos, S. Woodward: Institutional uses of Twitter in U.S. higher education, Innov. High. Educ. 42(2), 97–111 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • D.L. Linvill, S.E. McGee, L.K. Hicks: Colleges' and universities' use of Twitter: A content analysis, Pub. Relat. Rev. 38(4), 636–638 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • N.G. Barnes, A.M. Lescault: College Presidents Out-Blog and Out-Tweet Corporate CEO's (UMass Center for Marketing Research 2013), http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/socialmediaresearch/collegepresidentsoutblog/

  • G. Greenwood: Examining the presence of social media on university web sites, J. Coll. Admiss. 216, 24–28 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  • V. Prabhu, A.B. Rosenkrantz: Enriched audience engagement through Twitter: Should more academic radiology departments seize the opportunity?, J. Am. Coll. Radiol. 12(7), 756–759 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • P.S. Cahn, E.J. Benjamin, C.W. Shanahan: “Uncrunching” time: medical schools' use of social media for faculty development, Med. Educ. Online 1, 1–6 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  • A. Forkosh-Baruch, A. Hershkovitz: A case study of Israeli higher-education institutes sharing scholarly information with the community via social networks, Internet High. Educ. 15(1), 58–68 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • F. Boateng, Y. Quan Liu: Web 2.0 applications' usage and trends in top US academic libraries, Library Hi Tech 32(1), 120–138 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • A. Hussain: Adoption of Web 2.0 in library associations in the presence of social media, Program 49(2), 151–169 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • J. Shulman, J. Yep, D. Tomé: Leveraging the power of a Twitter network for library promotion, J. Acad. Librar. 41(2), 178–185 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • S.K.-W. Chu, H.S. Du: Social networking tools for academic libraries, J. Librar. Inf. Sci. 45(1), 64–75 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  • N. Verishagen, C. Hank: Are there birds in the library? The extent of Twitter adoption and use by Canadian academic libraries, First Monday (2015), https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v19i11.4945

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • C. Wilkinson, E. Weitkamp: A case study in serendipity: Environmental researchers use of traditional and social media for dissemination, PLoS One 8(12), e84339–e84339 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein, T.D. Bowman, K. Holmberg, I. Peters, V. Larivière: Astrophysicists on Twitter: An in-depth analysis of tweeting and scientific publication behavior, Aslib J. Inf. Manag. 66(3), 279–296 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Y. Mou: Presenting professorship on social media: From content and strategy to evaluation, Chinese J. Commun. 7(4), 389–408 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • T.D. Bowman: Differences in personal and professional tweets of scholars, Aslib J. Inf. Manag. 67(3), 356–371 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • X. Shuai, A. Pepe, J. Bollen: How the scientific community reacts to newly submitted preprints: Article downloads, Twitter mentions, and citations, PLoS One 7(11), e47523–e47523 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein, T.D. Bowman, R. Costas: When is an article actually published? An analysis of online availability, publication, and indexation dates. In: Proc. 15th Int. Soc. Scientometr. Informetr. Conf., Istanbul (2015) pp. 1170–1179, https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.00796

    Google Scholar 

  • K. Weller, C. Puschmann: Twitter for scientific communication: How can citations/references be identified and measured? In: Proc. ACM WebSci'11, Koblenz (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  • J. Paßmann, T. Boeschoten, M.T. Schäfer: The gift of the gab. Retweet cartels and gift economies on Twitter. In: Twitter and Society, ed. by K. Weller, A. Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, C. Puschmann (Peter Lang, New York 2014) pp. 331–344

    Google Scholar 

  • C. Warzel: Meet The Man Behind Twitter's Most Infamous Phrase, BuzzFeed News (2014), https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/meet-the-man-behind-twitters-most-infamous-phrase?utm_term=.jwWokRoZw#.fnElNylG4

  • K. Holmberg: The impact of retweeting, Figshare (2014), https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1037555

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein, T.D. Bowman, R. Costas: Interpreting “altmetrics”: Viewing acts on social media through the lens of citation and social theories. In: Theories of Informetrics and Scholarly Communication, ed. by C.R. Sugimoto (de Gruyter Mouton, Berlin 2016) pp. 372–405, https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05701

    Google Scholar 

  • H.D. White: Towards ego-centered citation analysis. In: The Web of Knowledge: A Festschrift in Honor of Eugene Garfield, ed. by B. Cronin, H.B. Atkins (Information Today, Medford 2000) pp. 475–496

    Google Scholar 

  • H.D. White: Authors as citers over time, J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 52(2), 87–108 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • I. Lulic, I. Kovic: Analysis of emergency physicians' Twitter accounts, Emerg. Med. J. EMJ 30(5), 371–376 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • C. Honeycutt, S.C. Herring: Beyond microblogging: Conversation and collaboration via Twitter. In: 42nd Hawaii Int. Conf. Syst. Sci., IEEE (2009) pp. 1–10, https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2009.89

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • A. Java, X. Song, T. Finin, B. Tseng: Why we twitter: Understanding microblogging usage and communities. In: Proc. 9th WebKDD 1st SNA-KDD Workshop Web Mining Soc. Netw. Anal. WebKDD/SNA-KDD '07 (ACM, New York 2007) pp. 56–65, https://doi.org/10.1145/1348549.1348556

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • A. Gerber: Online trends from the first German trend study on science communication. In: Science and the Internet (Düsseldorf Univ. Press, Düsseldorf 2012) pp. 13–18

    Google Scholar 

  • H. Donelan: Social media for professional development and networking opportunities in academia, J. Furth. High. Educ. 40(5), 706–729 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • M.E. Bulger, E.T. Meyer, G. De la Flor, M. Terras, S. Wyatt, M. Jirotka, K. Eccles, C. McCarthy Madsen: Reinventing research? Information practices in the humanities, A Res. Inf. Netw. Rep. (2011), https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1859267

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • A. Coverdale: Negotiating doctoral practices and academic identities through the adoption and use of social and participative media. In: Proc. Eur. Conf. eLearn., Brighton, Vol. 2011 (2011) p. 909

    Google Scholar 

  • D. Harley, S.K. Acord, S. Earl-Novell, S. Lawrence, C.J. King: Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines (Univ. of California Press, Berkeley 2010), http://escholarship.org/uc/item/15x7385g

    Google Scholar 

  • P. Mccrea: Reflections on academic blogging as a vehicle for professional development. In: Proceedings of the European Conference on eLearning, Brighton (2011) p. 997

    Google Scholar 

  • G. Veletsianos: Open practices and identity: Evidence from researchers and educators' social media participation, Br. J. Educ. Technol. 44(4), 639–651 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • A. Gruzd, K. Staves, A. Wilk: Connected scholars: Examining the role of social media in research practices of faculty using the UTAUT model, Comput. Human Behav. 28(6), 2340–2350 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • S. Rothschild, B. Unglesbee: Kansas University professor receiving death threats over NRA tweet. In: The Dispatch (2013), http://www.shawneedispatch.com/news/2013/sep/24/kansas-university-professor-receiving-death-threat/

    Google Scholar 

  • M. Bennett-Smith: Geoffrey Miller, Visiting NYU Professor, slammed for fat-shaming obese PhD applicants (2013), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/04/geoffrey-miller-fat-shaming-nyu-phd_n_3385641.html, last access: 14 April 2016

  • L. Ingeno: Fat-Shaming in Academe, Inside Higher Ed (2013), retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/06/04/outrage-over-professors-twitter-post-obese-students

  • D. Gaffney, C. Puschmann: Data collection on Twitter. In: Twitter and Society, ed. by K. Weller, A. Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, C. Puschmann (Peter Lang, New York 2014) pp. 55–67

    Google Scholar 

  • J.P. Alperin: Ask not what altmetrics can do for you, but what altmetrics can do for developing countries, Bull. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 39(4), 18–21 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein, C.R. Sugimoto, V. Larivière: Guest editorial: Social media in scholarly communication, Aslib J. Inf. Manag. (2015), https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-03-2015-0047

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • M. Taylor: Towards a common model of citation: Some thoughts on merging altmetrics and bibliometrics, Res. Trends (2013), 1–6 https://www.researchtrends.com/issue-35-december-2013/towards-a-common-model-of-citation-some-thoughts-on-merging-altmetrics-and-bibliometrics/

  • R. Costas, Z. Zahedi, P. Wouters: The thematic orientation of publications mentioned on social media: Large-scale disciplinary comparison of social media metrics with citations, Aslib J. Inf. Manag. 67(3), 260–288 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • H. Alhoori, R. Furuta: Do altmetrics follow the crowd or does the crowd follow altmetrics? In: 2014 IEEE/ACM Jt. Conf. Dig. Libr. (JCDL) (2014) pp. 375–378, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6970193

    Google Scholar 

  • J.P. Andersen, S. Haustein: Influence of study type on Twitter activity for medical research papers. In: Proc. 15th Int. Soc. Sci. Informetr. Conf., Istanbul (2015) pp. 26–36

    Google Scholar 

  • B. Hammarfelt: Using altmetrics for assessing research impact in the humanities, Scientometrics 101, 1419–1430 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein, V. Larivière, M. Thelwall, D. Amyot, I. Peters: Tweets vs. Mendeley readers: How do these two social media metrics differ?, It – Inf. Technol. 56(5), 207–215 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  • N. Robinson-García, D. Torres-Salinas, Z. Zahedi, R. Costas: New data, new possibilities: Exploring the insides of Altmetric.com, Prof. Inf. 23(4), 359–366 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  • A. Maleki: Networking in science tweets linking to scholarly articles of Iran. In: SIG/MET Workshop, ASIS&T 2014 Annu. Meet., Seattle (2014), http://www.asis.org/SIG/SIGMET/data/uploads/sigmet2014/maleki.pdf

    Google Scholar 

  • J.P. Alperin: Geographic variation in social media metrics: an analysis of Latin American journal articles, Aslib J. Inf. Manag. 67(3), 289–304 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein, T.D. Bowman, B. Macaluso, C.R. Sugimoto, V. Larivière: Measuring Twitter activity of arXiv e-prints and published papers. In: altmetrics14: Expanding Impacts and Metrics, Workshop at Web Science Conference (2014), https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1041514%20

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein, T.D. Bowman, K. Holmberg, A. Tsou, C.R. Sugimoto, V. Larivière: Tweets as impact indicators: Examining the implications of automated “bot” accounts on Twitter, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 67(1), 232–238 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • M. Fenner: What can article-level metrics do for you?, PLoS Biol. 11(10), e1001687–e1001687 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • S.R. Knight: Social media and online attention as an early measure of the impact of research in solid organ transplantation, Transplantation 98(5), 490–496 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Publishing Group: Announcement: A new iPad app for Nature readers, Nature 492(7428), 154–154 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nature Publishing Group: Media Options, https://web.archive.org/web/20110513233735/http://www.nature.com/advertising/resources/pdf/2010naturemediakit.pdf?prod_code=NATURE&prod=Nature (2010)

  • C. Neylon: Altmetrics: What are they good for? (2014), http://blogs.plos.org/opens/2014/10/03/altmetrics-what-are-they-good-for/

  • F. Didegah, T.D. Bowman, S. Bowman, J. Hartley: Comparing the characteristics of highly cited titles and highly alted titles. In: 21st Int. Conf. Sci. Technol. Indic., Valencia (2016) pp. 1190–1195, http://ocs.editorial.upv.es/index.php/STI2016/STI2016/paper/viewFile/4543/2327

    Google Scholar 

  • L. Bornmann: Validity of altmetrics data for measuring societal impact: A study using data from Altmetric and F1000Prime, J. Informetr. 8(4), 935–950 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • J. Priem, D. Taraborelli, P. Groth, C. Neylon: Altmetrics: A manifesto (2010), http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/

  • H.G. Allen, T.R. Stanton, F. Di Pietro, G.L. Moseley: Social media release increases dissemination of original articles in the clinical pain sciences, PLoS One 8(7), e68914–e68914 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • N. Friedrich: Applying Sentiment Analysis for Tweets Linking to Scientific Papers, Bachelor's Thesis (Heinrich-Heine-Univ. Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 2015)

    Google Scholar 

  • N. Friedrich, T.D. Bowman, S. Haustein: Do tweets to scientific articles contain positive or negative sentiments? In: altmetrics15: 5 Years In, What Do We Know?, Amsterdam (2015), http://altmetrics.org/altmetrics15/friedrich/

    Google Scholar 

  • I. Peters: Folksonomies Indexing and Retrieval in Web 2.0 (De Gruyter/Saur, Berlin 2009)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • G. Cabanac, J. Hartley: Issues of work-life balance among JASIST authors and editors, J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 64(10), 2182–2186 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • X. Wang, S. Xu, L. Peng, Z. Wang, C. Wang, C. Zhang, X. Wang: Exploring scientists' working timetable: Do scientists often work overtime?, J. Informetr. 6(4), 655–660 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • C.M. Zhang, V. Paxson: Detecting and analyzing automated activity on Twitter. In: Proc. 12th Int. Conf. Passive Active Meas. PAM'11 (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg 2011) pp. 102–111, http://www.icir.org/vern/papers/pam11.autotwit.pdf

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • M. Graham, S.A. Hale, D. Gaffney: Where in the world are you? Geolocation and language identification in Twitter, Prof. Geogr. 66(4), 568–578 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • M. Severo, T. Giraud, H. Pecout: Twitter data for urban policy making: an analysis on four European cities. In: Handbook of Twitter for Research, ed. by C. Levallois (EMLYON, Lyon 2015)

    Google Scholar 

  • Y. Takhteyev, A. Gruzd, B. Wellman: Geography of Twitter networks, Soc. Netw. 34(1), 73–81 (2012), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2011.05.006

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein, R. Costas: Determining Twitter audiences: Geolocation and number of followers. In: altmetrics15: 5 Years In, What Do We Know? (2015), http://altmetrics.org/altmetrics15/haustein/

    Google Scholar 

  • S. Haustein, V. Minik, D. Brinson, E. Hayes, R. Costas, C.R. Sugimoto: Identifying Twitter user communities in the context of altmetrics. In: 3rd Altmetrics Conference 3:AM, Bucharest (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  • A. Bruns, S. Stieglitz: Metrics for understanding communication on Twitter. In: Twitter and Society, ed. by K. Weller, A. Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, C. Puschmann (Peter Lang, New York 2014) pp. 69–82

    Google Scholar 

  • M. Mowbray: Automated Twitter Accounts. In: Twitter and Society, ed. by K. Weller, A. Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, C. Puschmann (Peter Lang, New York 2014) pp. 183–194

    Google Scholar 

  • A. Bessi, E. Ferrara: Social bots distort the 2016 U.S. Presidential election online discussion, First Monday (2016), https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v21i11.7090

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • E. Ferrara, O. Varol, C. Davis, F. Menczer, A. Flammini: The rise of social bots, Communications ACM 59(7), 96–104 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • J. Liu, E. Adie: Five challenges in altmetrics: A toolmaker' s perspective, Bull. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 39(4), 31–34 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Twitter. (2017, April 6). Automation rules. Retrieved from https://support.twitter.com/articles/76915

  • Twitter: The Twitter Rules. (n.d.), retrieved from https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311

  • C. Yang, R.C. Harkreader, G. Gu: Die free or live hard? Empirical evaluation and new design for fighting evolving Twitter spammers. In: Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection, Vol. 6961, ed. by R. Sommer, D. Balzarotti, G. Maier (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg 2011), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23644-0_17

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • C.A. Davis, O. Varol, E. Ferrara, A. Flammini, F. Menczer: BotOrNot: A System to Evaluate Social Bots (International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee, Geneva 2016) pp. 273–274, https://doi.org/10.1145/2872518.2889302

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • P.T. Metaxas, E. Mustafaraj: Social Media and the Elections, Science 338(6106), 472–473 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • J. Ratkiewicz, M.D. Conover, M. Meiss, B. Gonçalves, A. Flammini, F. Menczer: Detecting and tracking political abuse in social media. In: Proc. 5th Int. AAAI Conf. Weblogs Soc. Media, Barcelona (AAAI, Menlo Park 2011) pp. 297–304

    Google Scholar 

  • J. Ratkiewicz, M. Conover, M. Meiss, B. Gonçalves, S. Patil, A. Flammini, F. Menczer: Truthy: mapping the spread of astroturf in microblog streams. In: Proc. 20th Int. Conf. Comp. World Wide Web WWW '11 (ACM, New York 2011) p. 249, https://doi.org/10.1145/1963192.1963301

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada

    Stefanie Haustein

Authors
  1. Stefanie Haustein
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefanie Haustein .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. ECOOM and Faculty of Economics and Business, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Wolfgang Glänzel

  2. Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Henk F. Moed

  3. Competence Center Policy – Industry – Innovation, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Ulrich Schmoch

  4. Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

    Mike Thelwall

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Haustein, S. (2019). Scholarly Twitter Metrics. In: Glänzel, W., Moed, H.F., Schmoch, U., Thelwall, M. (eds) Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators. Springer Handbooks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02511-3_28

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation