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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

#41

Post by eXpl0it3r »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #32

This is really frightening for anyone who works in these fields but isn't on any of the main social networks. I left facebook and co years ago and feel much better for it. I get that marketing matters, but marketing on a shitshow like twitter seems sanity challenging.

Twitter is what you make it to be. If you follow people that post a lot of (angry) political stuff and you get yourself involved and also tweet about it, then yes, things become quickly a shitshow. If you however look for people that talk about stuff you're interested in or of your own field, then you can get a lot of interesting conversations with people all over the world. Use the unfollow button and/or mute option for people that bring too much negativity to your feed and don't engage in negativity yourself.

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

#42

Post by n4r9 »

yutopia wrote: post #27
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…

I think the general trend of researchers becoming more media-savvy is great. But I also get the sense that researchers are increasingly choosing to work on Twitter-friendly topics (e.g., sensational, visually striking, reducible to sound bites) — whether that’s also positive I’m not so sure.

I wonder if there's an inverse relationship between the level of pressure on scientists to publish, tweet, blog and demonstrate the social relevance of their work, and groundbreaking advances in fundamental physics.

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

#43

Post by tetris11 »

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #34
cameronbrown wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two Minute Papers is a great example of this: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbfYPyITQ-7l4upoX8nvctg

Two minute papers is fantastic! I just wish that all of the papers he covers had source code available. A few of them I've gotten excited about and hopped around the net to read the paper only to find no code available.

This is the state of science in a lot fields unfortunately. Many reviewers skim the paper, put in a thinly veiled complaint about why their own paper was not cited, and don't bother with the code.

The code itself is always usually a mess: no readme, no license, random binaries, and a 'pipeline' which is simply a bunch of perl and python scripts cobbler together from snippets found on the web.

People publish, then move onto the next project. There is no maintenance.

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

#44

Post by the_omegist »

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…

That's a noble practice but I think everyone should stick at what he does best, for a better overall efficiency. As long as you make your paper easily available, as another commenter said, another person can make it more comprehensible for the general public.

One of the causes of the slowdown (even if marginal) of science and research in general is the administrative and social media overlays that were added to them.

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

#45

Post by conjectures »

the_omegist wrote: post #44
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…

That's a noble practice but I think everyone should stick at what he does best, for a better overall efficiency. As long as you make your paper easily available, as another commenter said, another person can make it more comprehensible for the general public. One of the causes of the slowdown (even if marginal) of science and research in general is the administrative and social media overlays that were added to them.

> As long as you make your paper easily available, as another commenter said, another person can make it more comprehensible for the general public.

I'm not sure you appreciate how hard this might be for someone who is not closely connected to a project.

The people who can do that reliably will have: a) the academic chops on a similar level of a peer reviewer b) social media skills. a) puts them back in the bracket of people you don't want to 'slow down'.

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

#46

Post by Traster »

I find this incredibly unsurprising, if you follow journalists on twitter you'll hear the same thing over and over again. They say twitter is a disaster, every time you say anything slightly controversial you'll get dozens of random strangers attack you, and some will even permanently follow you insulting you until you block them. They also say they can't leave because it's one of the primary drivers of traffic to their articles and it would be impossible to achieve the metrics their employer requires without it.

It seems a strange property that twitter has developed of being both a terrible experience but also incredibly effective at organic advertising.

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

#47

Post by henrikeh »

tetris11 wrote: post #43
matthewfcarlson wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two minute papers is fantastic! I just wish that all of the papers he covers had source code available. A few of them I've gotten excited about and hopped around the net to read the paper only to find no code available.

This is the state of science in a lot fields unfortunately. Many reviewers skim the paper, put in a thinly veiled complaint about why their own paper was not cited, and don't bother with the code. The code itself is always usually a mess: no readme, no license, random binaries, and a 'pipeline' which is simply a bunch of perl and python scripts cobbler together from snippets found on the web. People publish, then mov…

> This is the state of science in a lot fields unfortunately. Many reviewers skim the paper, put in a thinly veiled complaint about why their own paper was not cited, and don't bother with the code.

Excuse me. Is this your actual experience or the meme that everybody is simply repeating?

In the admittedly few papers I have published, the reviewers’ feedback has been a net positive I wouldn’t be without.

Also, the general focus on code in science here on HN is so incredibly myopic and narrow minded. Code for research are not high-profile software projects. They are a piece in the toolbox used to solve a problem. Some grow to become larger projects, some fulfill their purpose and stay fixed in time.

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

#48

Post by reportgunner »

founderling wrote: post #39

Well, tweeting where ? If it is tweeted on an account with 0 followers, then certainly not, right? And when tweeted to one millioin scientists in the same field, then certainly yes, right?

Tweeting is science now.

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

#49

Post by raxxorrax »

n4r9 wrote: post #42
yutopia wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the general trend of researchers becoming more media-savvy is great. But I also get the sense that researchers are increasingly choosing to work on Twitter-friendly topics (e.g., sensational, visually striking, reducible to sound bites) — whether that’s also positive I’m not so sure.

I wonder if there's an inverse relationship between the level of pressure on scientists to publish, tweet, blog and demonstrate the social relevance of their work, and groundbreaking advances in fundamental physics.

I don't think so. The culture of publish or perish is certainly detestable and I don't think 160 characters are enough for a synopsis. But I don't think it negatively affects research. At least I hope so.

Fundamental research and humanities both have these funding issues. It may be worth a discussion if these fields could benefit from increased public funding, because some forms of research don't result in an immediate economic benefit.

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

#50

Post by webmaven »

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…

I think you're conflating several different purposes of citations.

A thorough literature search is mostly needed to avoid claiming as novel innovations/discoveries things that others have previously published (even if you more-or-less ended up discovering it independently). Secondarily, it also helps you avoid ratholes that others have stumbled into (although the reduced incentives for publishing negative results makes this less effective).

However, citations of papers encountered on — and recalled from — social media are more likely to be for the inspiration they provided for the line of inquiry or methodology in your paper (even if that inspiration was negative, ie. you're refuting someone's work or conclusions).

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