Assessing the Journal Impact Based on Twitter Popularity: Taking International Top-tier Journals in the LIS Field as Examples

  • Yu Yisheng ,
  • Zhao Yuehua
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  • 1. School of Economics & Management, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631;
    2. School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee WI53211

Received date: 2016-02-15

  Revised date: 2016-04-06

  Online published: 2016-04-20

Abstract

[Purpose/significance] With the emergence of social media and electronic publication platforms, using the Twitter popularity to assess the social impact of a given journal can compensate the traditional measures. Revealing the relevance between the Twitter popularity and the traditional measures can help us to build proper measures to evaluate journal popularity on social media.[Method/process] Based on 2013 Journal Citation Reports (social science edition), 30 journals with high impact factors in the library and information science (LIS) field were identified as top-tier journals. To explore the association between the proposed altmetrics indicator and citation-based measures, Spearman's rho nonparametric correlation analysis was conducted to test the correlations between Twitter mentions and eight traditional measures (total cites, impact factor, five-year impact factor, immediacy index, articles, cited half-life, Eigenfactor score, and article influence score).[Result/conclusion] Through the investigation, the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), College & Research Libraries, and Scientometrics are the most prevalent LIS journals on Twitter. There is a significant and moderate correlation observed between Twitter mentions and the Eigenfactor score for the investigated journals. The results of this study supports the findings of previous studies, which indicates that the journal Twitter popularity may not measure the scientific impact as the citation-based measurements do. It is also shown that journals with official accounts have attained much more mentions than those without Twitter accounts.

Cite this article

Yu Yisheng , Zhao Yuehua . Assessing the Journal Impact Based on Twitter Popularity: Taking International Top-tier Journals in the LIS Field as Examples[J]. Library and Information Service, 2016 , 60(8) : 99 -105 . DOI: 10.13266/j.issn.0252-3116.2016.08.012

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