If I tweet will you cite? The effect of social media exposure of articles on downloads and citations.

Tonia, Thomy; Van Oyen, Herman; Berger, Anke; Schindler, Christian; Künzli, Nino (2016). If I tweet will you cite? The effect of social media exposure of articles on downloads and citations. International journal of public health, 61(4), pp. 513-520. Springer 10.1007/s00038-016-0831-y

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OBJECTIVES

We sought to investigate whether exposing scientific papers to social media (SM) has an effect on article downloads and citations.

METHODS

We randomized all International Journal of Public Health (IJPH) original articles published between December 2012 and December 2014 to SM exposure (blog post, Twitter and Facebook) or no exposure at three different time points after first online publication.

RESULTS

130 papers (SM exposure = 65, control = 65) were randomized. The number of downloads did not differ significantly between groups (p = 0.60) nor did the number of citations (p = 0.88). Adjusting for length of observation and paper's geographical origin did not change these results. There was no difference in the number of downloads and citations between the SM exposure and control group when we stratified for open access status. The number of downloads and number of citations were significantly correlated in both groups.

CONCLUSIONS

SM exposure did not have a significant effect on traditional impact metrics, such as downloads and citations. However, other metrics may measure the added value that social media might offer to a scientific journal, such as wider dissemination.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

04 Faculty of Medicine > Pre-clinic Human Medicine > Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM)

UniBE Contributor:

Tonia, Thomai, Berger, Anke

Subjects:

600 Technology > 610 Medicine & health
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 360 Social problems & social services

ISSN:

1661-8556

Publisher:

Springer

Language:

English

Submitter:

Doris Kopp Heim

Date Deposited:

30 Dec 2016 11:27

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:00

Publisher DOI:

10.1007/s00038-016-0831-y

PubMed ID:

27193574

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Bibliometrics Citations Downloads Facebook Social media Twitter

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.92308

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/92308

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