Can Social Media Boost Your Scientific Career?
As a scientist, there are different audiences for whom you might write. Audience number one is your scientific community niche—colleagues who are as expert as you are. For them, you don't need to simplify terms or assume a lack of knowledge. Then there's a newer audience for many scientists: the general public. Although the term "general public" might imply a broad audience, the segment of this group interested in science, while large, is not as vast as it may seem.
The question of how much these worlds intersect has driven numerous studies. The main focus has been: Can you enhance the citations of a scientific paper by sharing it on social and earning likes, shares, comments, and reposts? Today's data suggest a strong correlation between social media attention and paper citations. However, this correlation could be caused by different factors:
- Social media attention might increase citation numbers.
- A high-quality publication naturally garners attention on social media and accumulates many citations (“good papers are good,” C. McClain).
Branch and colleagues conducted a three-year-long controlled experiment on Twitter (I know, it is "X formerly known as...." but let's skip this) to see which assumption holds up.
How did they do it?
They selected five papers from the same journal issued in the same month; one was promoted on Twitter while the others were not. This process was repeated for 10 papers across 11 different journals, measuring Altmetric scores, the number of tweets, and citation counts before and after tweeting.
What did they find out?
Not surprisingly, all metrics increased for the promoted articles compared to the controls:
- an average of 2,973 impressions and 18 link clicks
- a 3.9-fold increase in downloads of the article on the day of tweeting, and 2.6-fold increase the day after tweeting.
- within 30 days the Altmetric scores were 68% higher
- after three years, the Altmetric score was 81% higher and the number of tweets 105% higher.
Sounds promising, right? However, the crucial finding was that the overall increase in citation counts after three years (+7% for Web of Science and +12% for Google Scholar) was not statistically significant (p > 0.15). This suggests that while the correlation between social media attention and citation rates could be demonstrated again, there was no proof that social media attention directly causes an increase in citations for a given paper.
What do I think about it?
I am not surprised by these results and I resonate with the quote from C. McClain: “good papers are good.” If you have quality content to promote, it is likely to perform well on most social media platforms and within the scientific community. People are genuinely interested in scientific innovations that have real-life significance and deliver some sort of value. Interestingly, similar rules apply to the business world: if you have something great to sell, it will likely find its way to success.
The entire study and its design shed new light on the actual value of social media for scientists and businesses: building community, finding partnerships, and gaining new ideas.