Isabella Peters

Tweeting biomedicine: An analysis of tweets and citations in the biomedical literature

Data collected by social media platforms have been introduced as new sources for indicators to help measure the impact of scholarly research in ways that are complementary to traditional citation analysis. Data generated from social media activities can be used to reflect broad types of impact. This article aims to provide systematic evidence about how often Twitter is used to disseminate information about journal articles in the biomedical sciences. The analysis is based on 1.4 million documents covered by both PubMed and Web of Science and published between 2010 and 2012. The number of tweets containing links to these documents was analyzed and compared to citations to evaluate the degree to which certain journals, disciplines, and specialties were represented on Twitter and how far tweets correlate with citation impact. With less than 10% of PubMed articles mentioned on Twitter, its uptake is low in general but differs between journals and specialties. Correlations between tweets and citations are low, implying that impact metrics based on tweets are different from those based on citations. A framework using the coverage of articles and the correlation between Twitter mentions and citations is proposed to facilitate the evaluation of novel social‐media‐based metrics.

Folksonomies. Indexing and Retrieval in Web 2.0

Collaborative information services on Web 2.0 are used by Internet users not only to produce digital information resources, but also to furnish the contents of the resources with their own keywords, so-called tags. Whilst doing so the user is not required to comply with rules, as is necessary with a library catalogue. The amount of user-generated tags in a collaborative information service is referred to as folksonomy. Folksonomies allow users to relocate their own resources and to search for other resources. This book deals with collaborative information services and folksonomies both as a method of representing knowledge and a tool for information retrieval.

Tweets vs. Mendeley readers: How do these two social media metrics differ

Abstract A set of 1.4 million biomedical papers was analyzed with regards to how often articles are mentioned on Twitter or saved by users on Mendeley. While Twitter is a microblogging platform used by a general audience to distribute information, Mendeley is a reference manager targeted at an academic user group to organize scholarly literature. Both platforms are used as sources for so-called “altmetrics” to measure a new kind of research impact. This analysis shows in how far they differ and compare to traditional citation impact metrics based on a large set of PubMed papers.

Government and Social Media: A Case Study of 31 Informational World Cities

Social media platforms are increasingly being used by governments to foster user interaction. Particularly in cities with enhanced ICT infrastructures (i.e., Informational World Cities) and high internet penetration rates, social media platforms are valuable tools for reaching high numbers of citizens. This empirical investigation of 31 Informational World Cities will provide an overview of social media services used for governmental purposes, of their popularity among governments, and of their usage intensity in broadcasting information online.

Public Libraries in the Knowledge Society: Core Services of Libraries in Informational World Cities

Abstract Informational Cities are the prototypical spaces of the knowledge society. Public libraries play an important role as parts of the digital, smart, knowledge and creative infrastructures of these Informational Cities. Libraries have economic value as location factors in the two spaces of Informational Cities, the physical and the digital. For this reason, we divided the library services into two main groups, namely the digital library and the physical library. For 31 specified Informational World Cities, we empirically analyzed the core services of their public libraries via content analysis of the libraries’ Web pages. Additionally, we studied these libraries’ social media activities. Many libraries provide free e-resources (above all, e-books, e-journals and bibliographical databases) to their customers. Libraries offer digital reference services, mainly via e-mail and Web forms. Their presence in social media is dominated by posts on Facebook and Twitter. Nearly all public libraries we analyzed represent attractive architectural landmarks in their region. Besides offering spaces for children, the libraries provide rooms for learning and getting together and, to a lesser degree, modular working spaces. Most libraries provide Wi-Fi inside their buildings; more than half of those we investigated work with RFID technology. The prototypical public library in the knowledge society has two core services: (1) to support citizens, companies and administrations in their city and region with digital services, namely e-resources as well as reference services, and to communicate with their customers via social media; and (2) to provide physical spaces for meeting, learning and working, as well as areas for children and other groups, in a building that is a landmark of the city.

Astrophysicists on Twitter: An in-depth analysis of tweeting and scientific publication behavior

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the tweeting behavior of 37 astrophysicists on Twitter and compares their tweeting behavior with their publication behavior and citation impact to show whether they tweet research-related topics or not. Design/methodology/approach – Astrophysicists on Twitter are selected to compare their tweets with their publications from Web of Science. Different user groups are identified based on tweeting and publication frequency. Findings – A moderate negative correlation (ρ=−0.339) is found between the number of publications and tweets per day, while retweet and citation rates do not correlate. The similarity between tweets and abstracts is very low (cos=0.081). User groups show different tweeting behavior such as retweeting and including hashtags, usernames and URLs. Research limitations/implications – The study is limited in terms of the small set of astrophysicists. Results are not necessarily representative of the entire astrophysicist community on Twitter and ...

“Power tags” in information retrieval

Purpose – Many Web 2.0 services (including Library 2.0 catalogs) make use of folksonomies. The purpose of this paper is to cut off all tags in the long tail of a document‐specific tag distribution. The remaining tags at the beginning of a tag distribution are considered power tags and form a new, additional search option in information retrieval systems.Design/methodology/approach – In a theoretical approach the paper discusses document‐specific tag distributions (power law and inverse‐logistic shape), the development of such distributions (Yule‐Simon process and shuffling theory) and introduces search tags (besides the well‐known index tags) as a possibility for generating tag distributions.Findings – Search tags are compatible with broad and narrow folksonomies and with all knowledge organization systems (e.g. classification systems and thesauri), while index tags are only applicable in broad folksonomies. Based on these findings, the paper presents a sketch of an algorithm for mining and processing pow...

Astrophysicists’ conversational connections on Twitter

Because Twitter and other social media are increasingly used for analyses based on altmetrics, this research sought to understand what contexts, affordance use, and social activities influence the tweeting behavior of astrophysicists. Thus, the presented study has been guided by three research questions that consider the influence of astrophysicists’ activities (i.e., publishing and tweeting frequency) and of their tweet construction and affordance use (i.e. use of hashtags, language, and emotions) on the conversational connections they have on Twitter. We found that astrophysicists communicate with a variety of user types (e.g. colleagues, science communicators, other researchers, and educators) and that in the ego networks of the astrophysicists clear groups consisting of users with different professional roles can be distinguished. Interestingly, the analysis of noun phrases and hashtags showed that when the astrophysicists address the different groups of very different professional composition they use very similar terminology, but that they do not talk to each other (i.e. mentioning other user names in tweets). The results also showed that in those areas of the ego networks that tweeted more the sentiment of the tweets tended to be closer to neutral, connecting frequent tweeting with information sharing activities rather than conversations or expressing opinions.

Looking for friends and followers: a global investigation of governmental social media use

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify governmental social media use in cities with enhanced information and communications technology infrastructures (i.e. Informational World Cities) and high Internet penetration rates. Social media platforms are increasingly being used by governments to foster user interaction and it was investigated if social media platforms are valuable tools for reaching high numbers of citizens. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is based on an iterative content and Web analysis from November 2012 till January 2013 and offers a comparison of different social media service types and the particular use. Findings – This empirical investigation of 31 Informational World Cities provides an overview of social media services used for governmental purposes, of their popularity among governments and of their usage intensity in broadcasting information online. Even as cities in a globalized world become more similar, a variety in the use of social media by governments was d...

Scientific bloggers under the altmetric microscope

In this paper we present a preliminary altmetric study of scientific bloggers and how they use different social media (i.e. blogs, social bookmarking systems, and Twitter) for scholarly communication, information dissemination, and creation of visibility. We analyzed linking behavior in blog posts and tweets, number of comments assigned to blog posts and share of publications found in social bookmarking systems. Results show that heavy tweeting and blogging do not result in large numbers of followers and comments, tweets and blog posts contain lots of URLs and self-citations, and share of publications found in social bookmarking systems varies between different platforms.