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The stability of Twitter metrics: A study on unavailable Twitter mentions of scientific publications

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  • Zhichao Fang
  • Jonathan Dudek
  • Rodrigo Costas

Abstract

This study investigated the stability of Twitter counts of scientific publications over time. For this, we conducted an analysis of the availability statuses of over 2.6 million Twitter mentions received by the 1,154 most tweeted scientific publications recorded by Altmetric.com up to October 2017. The results show that of the Twitter mentions for these highly tweeted publications, about 14.3% had become unavailable by April 2019. Deletion of tweets by users is the main reason for unavailability, followed by suspension and protection of Twitter user accounts. This study proposes two measures for describing the Twitter dissemination structures of publications: Degree of Originality (i.e., the proportion of original tweets received by an article) and Degree of Concentration (i.e., the degree to which retweets concentrate on a single original tweet). Twitter metrics of publications with relatively low Degree of Originality and relatively high Degree of Concentration were observed to be at greater risk of becoming unstable due to the potential disappearance of their Twitter mentions. In light of these results, we emphasize the importance of paying attention to the potential risk of unstable Twitter counts, and the significance of identifying the different Twitter dissemination structures when studying the Twitter metrics of scientific publications.

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  • Zhichao Fang & Jonathan Dudek & Rodrigo Costas, 2020. "The stability of Twitter metrics: A study on unavailable Twitter mentions of scientific publications," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(12), pages 1455-1469, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:71:y:2020:i:12:p:1455-1469
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.24344
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    Cited by:

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    2. Zhichao Fang & Rodrigo Costas & Wencan Tian & Xianwen Wang & Paul Wouters, 2021. "How is science clicked on Twitter? Click metrics for Bitly short links to scientific publications," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 72(7), pages 918-932, July.
    3. Houqiang Yu & Biegzat Murat & Longfei Li & Tingting Xiao, 2021. "How accurate are Twitter and Facebook altmetrics data? A comparative content analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(5), pages 4437-4463, May.
    4. Enrique Orduña-Malea & Cristina I. Font-Julián, 2022. "Are patents linked on Twitter? A case study of Google patents," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(11), pages 6339-6362, November.
    5. Zhichao Fang & Jonathan Dudek & Rodrigo Costas, 2022. "Facing the volatility of tweets in altmetric research," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(8), pages 1192-1195, August.
    6. Zhichao Fang & Rodrigo Costas & Paul Wouters, 2022. "User engagement with scholarly tweets of scientific papers: a large-scale and cross-disciplinary analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(8), pages 4523-4546, August.
    7. Rodrigo Costas & Sarah de Rijcke & Noortje Marres, 2021. "“Heterogeneous couplings”: Operationalizing network perspectives to study science‐society interactions through social media metrics," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 72(5), pages 595-610, May.
    8. Hajar Sotudeh & Zeinab Saber & Farzin Ghanbari Aloni & Mahdieh Mirzabeigi & Farshad Khunjush, 2022. "A longitudinal study of the evolution of opinions about open access and its main features: a twitter sentiment analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(10), pages 5587-5611, October.
    9. Zhichao Fang & Rodrigo Costas & Wencan Tian & Xianwen Wang & Paul Wouters, 2020. "An extensive analysis of the presence of altmetric data for Web of Science publications across subject fields and research topics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(3), pages 2519-2549, September.
    10. Aversa, Joseph & Jacobson, Jenna & Hernandez, Tony & Cleave, Evan & Macdonald, Michael & Dizonno, Stephanie, 2021. "The social media response to the rollout of legalized cannabis retail in Ontario, Canada," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).

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