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Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

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Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#11

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

This is actually very scary to me. This means that many papers citation list is not a result of a thorough literature search but rather the authors recalling papers they might have read or seen on social media. This is dangerous in that if there were papers from before The Tweet era that actually found that part of your research protocol was bad, they would not be found.

An example of this is the rat maze study that Feynman cites.

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm

That last thing we need is clickbait science.

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#12

Post by Iv »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #11

This is actually very scary to me. This means that many papers citation list is not a result of a thorough literature search but rather the authors recalling papers they might have read or seen on social media. This is dangerous in that if there were papers from before The Tweet era that actually found that part of your research protocol was bad, they would not be found. An example of this is the rat maze study that…

Kill Elsevier and paywall then. They are the alternative but no one is going to pay 30$ per paper they need to read. If references were hyper links to the full pdf, they would get more views

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#14

Post by viraptor »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #11

This is actually very scary to me. This means that many papers citation list is not a result of a thorough literature search but rather the authors recalling papers they might have read or seen on social media. This is dangerous in that if there were papers from before The Tweet era that actually found that part of your research protocol was bad, they would not be found. An example of this is the rat maze study that…

Some alternative explanations (likely a mix of them): papers that you see / think about influence the direction of your research; lit review is done early, but relevant papers you see in the process will be added; lit review is never going to be perfect, so more advertising = more chances of spotting something relevant.

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#15

Post by LetThereBeNick »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #11

This is actually very scary to me. This means that many papers citation list is not a result of a thorough literature search but rather the authors recalling papers they might have read or seen on social media. This is dangerous in that if there were papers from before The Tweet era that actually found that part of your research protocol was bad, they would not be found. An example of this is the rat maze study that…

Unlike in the past, it’s impossible to read every paper in one’s field. Since tools like PubMed, ISI, and Scopus all use a proprietary algorithm to rank search results, I appreciate any alternative channels for bringing relevant papers to my attention.

It’s also perfectly justified to search for papers solely based on how influential they’ve been in your field. Papers which trend on Twitter (perhaps long-awaited results) are already having an impact on labs, probably being discussed in journal club and shaping the trajectory of the field.

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#16

Post by jessriedel »

mhandley wrote: post #7

The research community really should do a better job of engaging with the wider world, irrespective of whether it increases citations. For example, I had this paper in Hotnets 2019, and about 80 people saw my presentation. But I also spent some time, turned it into a little video and put it on YouTube. 360,000 people have seen it there. Now the subtleties were probably lost on many of those people, but if only a few…

Most research is not useful or suitable to the wider world.

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#17

Post by Pfhreak »

jessriedel wrote: post #16
mhandley wrote: post #7

The research community really should do a better job of engaging with the wider world, irrespective of whether it increases citations. For example, I had this paper in Hotnets 2019, and about 80 people saw my presentation. But I also spent some time, turned it into a little video and put it on YouTube. 360,000 people have seen it there. Now the subtleties were probably lost on many of those people, but if only a few…

Most research is not useful or suitable to the wider world.

I guarantee a cottage industry of YouTubers would pop up digesting and rewrapping that content. Today, it's probably too inaccessible for them to do so.

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#18

Post by mhandley »

jessriedel wrote: post #16
mhandley wrote: post #7

The research community really should do a better job of engaging with the wider world, irrespective of whether it increases citations. For example, I had this paper in Hotnets 2019, and about 80 people saw my presentation. But I also spent some time, turned it into a little video and put it on YouTube. 360,000 people have seen it there. Now the subtleties were probably lost on many of those people, but if only a few…

Most research is not useful or suitable to the wider world.

Well, there are gradations to "the wider world". I don't know about you, but I read a lot of stuff that's way outside my area. That's why I hang out here. There's a huge gulf between "suitable for mainstream TV" and the opaque and overly compacted research paper. Places like New Scientist and Ars Technica fill this gap to some extent, but they tend to oversimplify to appeal to a wider audience. I'd rather hear it from the authors in an only slightly dumbed down form.

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#19

Post by anjc »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #11

This is actually very scary to me. This means that many papers citation list is not a result of a thorough literature search but rather the authors recalling papers they might have read or seen on social media. This is dangerous in that if there were papers from before The Tweet era that actually found that part of your research protocol was bad, they would not be found. An example of this is the rat maze study that…

> This means that many papers citation list is not a result of a thorough literature search

Related work sections aren't typically thorough, that's what lit surveys/reviews are for. It's also not a new phenomenon that highly cited work gets cited because it's highly cited, i.e. work is cited simply because it's more readily noticed. It's furthermore common for the same research to arise independently in different fields, with different terminology, i.e. bodies of research are somehow not found. So, no need to be scared, it's nothing new.

Re: Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from a Randomized Trial

#20

Post by sidr »

Swizec wrote: post #9
mhandley wrote: post #7

The research community really should do a better job of engaging with the wider world, irrespective of whether it increases citations. For example, I had this paper in Hotnets 2019, and about 80 people saw my presentation. But I also spent some time, turned it into a little video and put it on YouTube. 360,000 people have seen it there. Now the subtleties were probably lost on many of those people, but if only a few…

This reminds me of a story from Steven Levitt. He published Freakonomics together with Stephen Dubner then went back into academia while Dubner went down the podcaster route. 15 years later, Dubner has reached millions of people with his work and Levitt recently started a podcast and soft quit academia after realizing that one of his best papers after years of research and hard work got 3 citations. He assumes fewer…

I'm not sure why number of views/reads is the metric to optimize for, though. I'm sure more people listen to the Joe Rogan Experience than have read a Mathematical Theory of Communication. Does that intrinsically make it worth more?
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