IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0234912.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A case study exploring associations between popular media attention of scientific research and scientific citations

Author

Listed:
  • P Sage Anderson
  • Aubrey R Odom
  • Hunter M Gray
  • Jordan B Jones
  • William F Christensen
  • Todd Hollingshead
  • Joseph G Hadfield
  • Alyssa Evans-Pickett
  • Megan Frost
  • Christopher Wilson
  • Lance E Davidson
  • Matthew K Seeley

Abstract

The association between mention of scientific research in popular media (e.g., the mainstream media or social media platforms) and scientific impact (e.g., citations) has yet to be fully explored. The purpose of this study was to clarify this relationship, while accounting for some other factors that likely influence scientific impact (e.g., the reputations of the scientists conducting the research and academic journal in which the research was published). To accomplish this purpose, approximately 800 peer-reviewed articles describing original research were evaluated for scientific impact, popular media attention, and reputations of the scientists/authors and publication venue. A structural equation model was produced describing the relationship between non-scientific impact (popular media) and scientific impact (citations), while accounting for author/scientist and journal reputation. The resulting model revealed a strong association between the amount of popular media attention given to a scientific research project and corresponding publication and the number of times that publication is cited in peer-reviewed scientific literature. These results indicate that (1) peer-reviewed scientific publications receiving more attention in non-scientific media are more likely to be cited than scientific publications receiving less popular media attention, and (2) the non-scientific media is associated with the scientific agenda. These results may inform scientists who increasingly use popular media to inform the general public and scientists concerning their scientific work. These results might also inform administrators of higher education and research funding mechanisms, who base decisions partly on scientific impact.

Suggested Citation

  • P Sage Anderson & Aubrey R Odom & Hunter M Gray & Jordan B Jones & William F Christensen & Todd Hollingshead & Joseph G Hadfield & Alyssa Evans-Pickett & Megan Frost & Christopher Wilson & Lance E Dav, 2020. "A case study exploring associations between popular media attention of scientific research and scientific citations," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-15, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0234912
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0234912
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0234912
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0234912&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0234912?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thed van Leeuwen, 2008. "Testing the validity of the Hirsch-index for research assessment purposes," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(2), pages 157-160, June.
    2. José Luis Ortega, 2016. "To be or not to be on Twitter, and its relationship with the tweeting and citation of research papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 1353-1364, November.
    3. Daniele Fanelli, 2013. "Any publicity is better than none: newspaper coverage increases citations, in the UK more than in Italy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 95(3), pages 1167-1177, June.
    4. James S. Fairweather, 2005. "Beyond the Rhetoric: Trends in the Relative Value of Teaching and Research in Faculty Salaries," The Journal of Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 76(4), pages 401-422, July.
    5. Stefanie Haustein & Isabella Peters & Judit Bar-Ilan & Jason Priem & Hadas Shema & Jens Terliesner, 2014. "Coverage and adoption of altmetrics sources in the bibliometric community," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1145-1163, November.
    6. Eichorn, P. & Yankauer, A., 1987. "Do authors check their references? A survey of accuracy of references in three public health journals," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 77(8), pages 1011-1012.
    7. Stefanie Haustein & Isabella Peters & Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Mike Thelwall & Vincent Larivière, 2014. "Tweeting biomedicine: An analysis of tweets and citations in the biomedical literature," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 65(4), pages 656-669, April.
    8. Ted I. K. Youn & Tanya M. Price, 2009. "Learning from the Experience of Others: The Evolution of Faculty Tenure and Promotion Rules in Comprehensive Institutions," The Journal of Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 80(2), pages 204-237, March.
    9. Nabeil Maflahi & Mike Thelwall, 2018. "How quickly do publications get read? The evolution of mendeley reader counts for new articles," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 69(1), pages 158-167, January.
    10. Estelle Dumas-Mallet & André Garenne & Thomas Boraud & François Gonon, 2020. "Does newspapers coverage influence the citations count of scientific publications? An analysis of biomedical studies," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(1), pages 413-427, April.
    11. Donald deB. Beaver, 2004. "Does collaborative research have greater epistemic authority?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 60(3), pages 399-408, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christian Lessmann & Ali Sina Önder, 2023. "Do Social Media Science Stars Get Citation Premium?," Working Papers in Economics & Finance 2023-09, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth Business School, Economics and Finance Subject Group.
    2. Nasirov, Shukhrat & Joshi, Amol M., 2023. "Minding the communications gap: How can universities signal the availability and value of their scientific knowledge to commercial organizations?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(9).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liwei Zhang & Jue Wang, 2021. "What affects publications’ popularity on Twitter?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(11), pages 9185-9198, November.
    2. Isidro F. Aguillo, 2020. "Altmetrics of the Open Access Institutional Repositories: a webometrics approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(3), pages 1181-1192, June.
    3. Yu Liu & Dan Lin & Xiujuan Xu & Shimin Shan & Quan Z. Sheng, 2018. "Multi-views on Nature Index of Chinese academic institutions," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(3), pages 823-837, March.
    4. Chieh Liu & Mu-Hsuan Huang, 2022. "Exploring the relationships between altmetric counts and citations of papers in different academic fields based on co-occurrence analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(8), pages 4939-4958, August.
    5. Martín-Martín, Alberto & Orduna-Malea, Enrique & Delgado López-Cózar, Emilio, 2018. "Author-level metrics in the new academic profile platforms: The online behaviour of the Bibliometrics community," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 494-509.
    6. Bornmann, Lutz, 2014. "Do altmetrics point to the broader impact of research? An overview of benefits and disadvantages of altmetrics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 895-903.
    7. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin & Adams, Jonathan, 2019. "Do altmetrics assess societal impact in a comparable way to case studies? An empirical test of the convergent validity of altmetrics based on data from the UK research excellence framework (REF)," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 325-340.
    8. Kaltrina Nuredini, 2021. "Investigating Altmetric Information For The Top 1000 Journals From Handelsblatt Ranking In Economic And Business Studies," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(5), pages 1315-1343, December.
    9. Mark D Lindner & Richard K Nakamura, 2015. "Examining the Predictive Validity of NIH Peer Review Scores," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(6), pages 1-12, June.
    10. Saeed-Ul Hassan & Mubashir Imran & Uzair Gillani & Naif Radi Aljohani & Timothy D. Bowman & Fereshteh Didegah, 2017. "Measuring social media activity of scientific literature: an exhaustive comparison of scopus and novel altmetrics big data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(2), pages 1037-1057, November.
    11. Zhiqi Wang & Wolfgang Glänzel & Yue Chen, 2020. "The impact of preprints in Library and Information Science: an analysis of citations, usage and social attention indicators," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1403-1423, November.
    12. Mike Thelwall & Kayvan Kousha & Mahshid Abdoli & Emma Stuart & Meiko Makita & Paul Wilson & Jonathan Levitt, 2023. "Do altmetric scores reflect article quality? Evidence from the UK Research Excellence Framework 2021," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 74(5), pages 582-593, May.
    13. Liwei Zhang & Jue Wang, 2018. "Why highly cited articles are not highly tweeted? A biology case," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(1), pages 495-509, October.
    14. Johanna M. Askeridis, 2018. "An h index for Mendeley: comparison of citation-based h indices and a readership-based hmen index for 29 authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(1), pages 615-624, October.
    15. Cruz-Castro, Laura & Sanz-Menendez, Luis, 2021. "What should be rewarded? Gender and evaluation criteria for tenure and promotion," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    16. Yu, Houqiang & Xu, Shenmeng & Xiao, Tingting & Hemminger, Brad M. & Yang, Siluo, 2017. "Global science discussed in local altmetrics: Weibo and its comparison with Twitter," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 466-482.
    17. Lutz Bornmann, 2015. "Alternative metrics in scientometrics: a meta-analysis of research into three altmetrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(3), pages 1123-1144, June.
    18. Zhichao Fang & Rodrigo Costas, 2020. "Studying the accumulation velocity of altmetric data tracked by Altmetric.com," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 1077-1101, May.
    19. Sergio Copiello, 2020. "Other than detecting impact in advance, alternative metrics could act as early warning signs of retractions: tentative findings of a study into the papers retracted by PLoS ONE," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2449-2469, December.
    20. Steffen Lemke & Max Brede & Sophie Rotgeri & Isabella Peters, 2022. "Research articles promoted in embargo e-mails receive higher citations and altmetrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(1), pages 75-97, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0234912. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.