The Journal and Social Media
Neurocrit Care
The Journal and Social Media
Eelco F. M. Wijdicks 0 1
0 Division of Critical Care Neurology, Mayo Clinic , 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905 , USA
1 & Eelco F. M. Wijdicks
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Neurocritical Care has social reach. It may seem that there
is a breakdown of journals into articles, papers are easily
traceable, and even figures are shared. This creates a
metric, and next to the impact factor, altmetrics have
positioned itself as a social Web-based tool that analyzes
social traffic among journal readers. Altmetrics are an
aggregate of multiple data sources derived mostly from
news stories, tweets, Facebook pages, blog posts, and
Mendeley readers. But altmetrics are currently a major
source of discussion among journal editors, who may
question their reliability and the alleged connection
between altmetrics and citation statistics. The precision of
measuring research impact with altmetrics is not known
and intuitively low. In a broader sense, altmetrics measure
immediacy and attention for the article as well as
nonacademic engagement. Hearsay suggests that authors use
the altmetric scores to show a broader impact and justify
grant funding. None of this is substantiated. Social media
uses many traditional ways to show that provocative
articles get more attention and are more likely to go viral. If
altmetrics showed a strong correlation with article citation,
such attention on social media cites could potentially affect
the impact factor. Joining and using Twitter could
potentially contribute to improvement in the impact factor.
However, even if correlation is clear, cause and effect is
not. The Journal recognizes the opportunity to share
interesting and exceptional articles via social media. On the
Journal’s Web site, you will find the altmetric score—if
there is one—in the circle next to the number of citations
and under the rubric ‘‘shares.’’ Opening up the link
provides the reader with more data on sources.
And then there is Twitter. Twitter is an underused means
of journal communication, with about a third of medical
journals hosting a profile. Generally, Twitter users post
messages, about 140 characters in length, and use hashtags
(words or phrases prefixed with a ‘‘#’’ sign) to highlight a
discussion topic, which may reveal an attitude or opinion
the author attaches to the tweet. Messages can be
‘‘retweeted,’’ or reposted to a wide audience and often very
rapidly. Users can also ‘‘favorite’’ a tweet, indicating
approval.
For the neurointensivist trying to keep up with
neurocritical care literature, Twitter can be an important curator
of articles, saving time for literature reviews. In mid-2016,
we opened up a Journal Twitter account
(@NeurocritCareJ), and the number of followers is rapidly growing.
This supplements the Neurocritical Care Twitter Journal
Club led by Aarti Sarwal. The Journal selects articles for
tweets differently than other journals, which tweet out any
article posted online. The journal tweets are only about the
journal but may involve press releases of papers,
notable editorials, or other comments published online and
slated for an upcoming issue. The journal does not retweet
postings from other journals or personal accounts. The
journal does not use hashtags and will stay professional in
all postings. We encourage authors to link their work to a
social media account and inform their personal followers.
An example of Neurocritical Care Journal tweets is
shown in Fig. 1. We can expect that traditional systems
may eventually become overshadowed by multiple other
article metric tools such as ALM PLoS, which covers
papers from PLoS; ImpactStory, which covers all the
research products such as PLoS, PubMed, SlideShare, and
YouTube; and Plum Analytics covering journal articles,
books, videos, presentations, conference proceedings,
datasets, and other sources.
Medical journals have started to use Twitter as a means
to disseminate new research, to increase readership, and to
interact with readers. Twitter is a tremendous new tool for
journals, but we do not know whether there is a correlation
between actual reading of an article and Twitter activity.
Also, no conclusions can be drawn from articles with
altmetrics scores of 0. I have identified papers with a good
number of citations and low altmetric scores. Moreover,
altmetric scores are biased toward manuscripts in
openaccess journals, which are freely available on the Web.
Seeing Twitter activity on the Neurocritical Care Web
site and on the Journal Twitter handle gives us a good
opportunity to spread the information fast. We like to be
part of the ‘‘academic buzz.’’ Springer has designated
persons for content-acquisition marketing and author
marketing. Thera Farina, D. M. Diem, and Sarah Garfunkel
track mentions on Twitter, CiteULike, Mendeley, academic
blogs, news outlets, and Wikipedia. Please join us on our
Twitter account. You can be part of the buzz too.
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