Ellis John, Ellis Bethany, Tyler Kevin, Reichel Michael P
School of Life Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, NSW, Australia.
Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
Curr Res Parasitol Vector Borne Dis. 2021 Feb 8;1:100013. doi: 10.1016/j.crpvbd.2021.100013. eCollection 2021.
In recent times, the use of social media for the dissemination of "news and views" in parasitology has increased in popularity. News, Twitter and Blogs have emerged as commonplace vehicles in the knowledge dissemination and transfer process. Alternative metrics ("altmetrics"), based on social media mentions have been proposed as a measure of societal impact, although firm evidence for this relationship is yet to be found. Nevertheless, increasing amounts of data on "altmetrics" are being analysed to identify the nature of the unknown impact that social media is generating. Here, we examine the recent, and increasing use of social media in the field of parasitology and the relationship of "altmetrics" with more traditional bibliometric indicators, such as article citations and journal metrics. The analyses document the rise and dominance of Twitter as the main form of social media occurring in the discipline of parasitology and note the contribution to this trend of Twitter bots that automatically tweet about publications. We also report on the use of the social referencing platform Mendeley and its correlation to article citations; Mendeley reader numbers are now considered to provide firm evidence on the early impact of research. Finally, we consider the Twitter profile of 31 journals publishing parasitology research articles (by volume of papers published); we show that 13 journals are associated with prolific Twitter activity about parasitology. We hope this study will stimulate not only the continued and responsible use of social media to disseminate knowledge about parasitology for the greater good, but also encourage others to further investigate the impact and benefits that altmetrics may bring to this discipline.
近年来，利用社交媒体传播寄生虫学领域的“新闻与观点”越来越流行。新闻网站、推特和博客已成为知识传播与传递过程中常见的媒介。基于社交媒体提及量的替代计量指标（“ altmetrics”）已被提议作为衡量社会影响力的一种方式，尽管尚未找到这种关系的确凿证据。然而，越来越多关于“ altmetrics”的数据正在被分析，以确定社交媒体正在产生的未知影响的性质。在此，我们研究了社交媒体在寄生虫学领域的近期且不断增加的应用，以及“ altmetrics”与更传统的文献计量指标（如文章引用量和期刊指标）之间的关系。分析记录了推特作为寄生虫学学科中出现的主要社交媒体形式的兴起与主导地位，并指出自动发布有关出版物推文的推特机器人对这一趋势的推动作用。我们还报告了社交参考平台Mendeley的使用情况及其与文章引用量的相关性；Mendeley读者数量现在被认为能为研究的早期影响力提供确凿证据。最后，我们考察了31种发表寄生虫学研究文章的期刊（按发表论文数量）的推特概况；我们发现有13种期刊与大量关于寄生虫学的推特活动相关。我们希望这项研究不仅能促进继续并负责任地利用社交媒体传播有关寄生虫学的知识以造福大众，还能鼓励其他人进一步研究altmetrics可能给该学科带来的影响和益处。
