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Academic information on Twitter: A user survey
- Source :
- PLoS ONE, Vol 13, Iss 5, p e0197265 (2018), PLoS ONE
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2018.
-
Abstract
- Although counts of tweets citing academic papers are used as an informal indicator of interest, little is known about who tweets academic papers and who uses Twitter to find scholarly information. Without knowing this, it is difficult to draw useful conclusions from a publication being frequently tweeted. This study surveyed 1,912 users that have tweeted journal articles to ask about their scholarly-related Twitter uses. Almost half of the respondents (45%) did not work in academia, despite the sample probably being biased towards academics. Twitter was used most by people with a social science or humanities background. People tend to leverage social ties on Twitter to find information rather than searching for relevant tweets. Twitter is used in academia to acquire and share real-time information and to develop connections with others. Motivations for using Twitter vary by discipline, occupation, and employment sector, but not much by gender. These factors also influence the sharing of different types of academic information. This study provides evidence that Twitter plays a significant role in the discovery of scholarly information and cross-disciplinary knowledge spreading. Most importantly, the large numbers of non-academic users support the claims of those using tweet counts as evidence for the non-academic impacts of scholarly research.
- Subjects :
- Male
User survey
Social Sciences
lcsh:Medicine
Employment sector
Surveys
Scholarly communication
Sociology
Surveys and Questionnaires
lcsh:Science
Multidisciplinary
05 social sciences
Social Communication
Middle Aged
Professions
Social Networks
Research Design
Female
InformationSystems_MISCELLANEOUS
050904 information & library sciences
Network Analysis
Research Article
Adult
Computer and Information Sciences
Twitter
Internet privacy
MEDLINE
Sample (statistics)
Research and Analysis Methods
050905 science studies
Young Adult
Sex Factors
Leverage (negotiation)
Humans
Social media
Occupations
Motivation
Survey Research
business.industry
lcsh:R
Communications
Scholarly Communication
Interpersonal ties
People and Places
Population Groupings
lcsh:Q
0509 other social sciences
business
Social Media
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 19326203
- Volume :
- 13
- Issue :
- 5
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- PLoS ONE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....1c768ff5bc3f7522dcfaed49806f8f62