[ECOLOG-L] Is Nature still a credible journal? Or is this the era of Kardasian science?

[David Duffy]

While perusing an abstract in "Nature this week" ,

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7547/full/520266d.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20150416

I  found a button to click called "Article Metrics". Once clicked, I found
it had three different metrics: 1. citations (zero as the article is brand
new, but likely to be frequent in the future), an alimetric score
apparently based on 9 tweets and one reddit, and a map of Twitter
"demographics" (n = 5). The alimetric score " is calculated based on two
main sources of online attention: social media and mainstream news media".

Citations have their problems as a growing literature documents, but
turning over judgement of quality to Twitter and Reddit suggests Nature is
pandering to the standards society uses to judge the Kardasians, Miley
Cyrus and Prince Harry in Las Vegas.

And we want Congress and the public to take science seriously?

David Duffy

-- 
David Duffy
戴大偉 (Dài Dàwěi)
Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit
Botany
University of Hawaii
3190 Maile Way
Honolulu Hawaii 96822 USA
1-808-956-8218

Re: [ECOLOG-L] Is Nature still a credible journal? Or is this the era of Kardasian science?

[Casey terHorst]

I don't think that these metrics should be used as a strict metric of
quality, but I don't think they can be dismissed either. The same media
that report on pop culture phenomena are also now used to report news from
the New York Times, Washington Post, and NPR.  Many people now use Twitter,
Reddit, Facebook, etc as their primary news source. If a Nature story makes
it into somebody's newsfeed and is actually read, I think that's a victory
for scientific literacy and public awareness of science. Aside from
communication with the general public, articles that were mentioned
frequently on Twitter were 11 times more likely to be cited than less
frequently mentioned articles (Eysenback 2011). While these metrics should
not be used as a proxy for the quality of a paper, they are likely a good
proxy for the "broader impact" of a paper.

Casey

---
Casey terHorst
Assistant Professor
Department of Biology
California State University, Northridge
18111 Nordhoff Street
Northridge, CA 91330-8303
Office Phone: (818) 677-3352
casey.terho...@csun.edu
http://www.ecoevolab.com

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 5:49 PM, David Duffy  wrote:

> While perusing an abstract in "Nature this week" ,
>
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.nature.com_nature_journal_v520_n7547_full_520266d.html-3FWT.ec-5Fid-3DNATURE-2D20150416&d=AwIFaQ&c=Oo8bPJf7k7r_cPTz1JF7vEiFxvFRfQtp-j14fFwh71U&r=pLB0OGe38hM4pJZZFglWpQz-fLkc9E0r1Osik9lzZgY&m=bJdzNbfCLo89y35bYSXP8vE9jX3Vvu4mxHVJq8DZJ_E&s=SDVOoPmfoKEhFLnVLiFFuu6aM63z9OOjP66G12u6s4M&e=
>
> I  found a button to click called "Article Metrics". Once clicked, I found
> it had three different metrics: 1. citations (zero as the article is brand
> new, but likely to be frequent in the future), an alimetric score
> apparently based on 9 tweets and one reddit, and a map of Twitter
> "demographics" (n = 5). The alimetric score " is calculated based on two
> main sources of online attention: social media and mainstream news media".
>
> Citations have their problems as a growing literature documents, but
> turning over judgement of quality to Twitter and Reddit suggests Nature is
> pandering to the standards society uses to judge the Kardasians, Miley
> Cyrus and Prince Harry in Las Vegas.
>
> And we want Congress and the public to take science seriously?
>
> David Duffy
>
> --
> David Duffy
> 戴大偉 (Dài Dàwěi)
> Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit
> Botany
> University of Hawaii
> 3190 Maile Way
> Honolulu Hawaii 96822 USA
> 1-808-956-8218
>

Re: [ECOLOG-L] Is Nature still a credible journal? Or is this the era of Kardasian science?

[Rosenbaum, Stacy]

Hi David,
Let me preface this by saying I am not active on social media. The extent of my 
presence is a mostly inactive Facebook account that is more personal than 
professional. However, I fully recognize that I am increasingly in the 
minority. Many of my colleagues tweet/Facebook/blog/Reddit about their work 
regularly, and they have urged me to reconsider my lack of presence. It is not 
a coincidence that they are much better known than I am in our scientific 
community.  Many of them hold prestigious postdoctoral or faculty positions at 
some of the US and Europe’s best institutions, and they both conduct and 
publish rigorous, worthwhile science.
Dismissing social media metrics is an outdated and arguably elitist approach. 
Communication changes, and in this case I think it is changing for the better. 
These platforms help scientists reach a much broader audience, and spark 
interest in topics that previously went largely unexplored outside small groups 
of specialists. Most of take public funding—hence your reference to 
Congress—and we have a responsibility to make our work more accessible and more 
public. Using social media platforms as a metric of scientific visibility is 
perfectly reasonable, and a complement to more traditional metrics that are (at 
least theoretically) designed to quantify quality. It’s a sign that the 
scientific establishment might be making a bit of headway in demonstrating its 
relevance to a wider audience.

Cheers, Stacy


Stacy Rosenbaum
NSF Postdoctoral Fellow
Davee Center for Epidemiology and Endocrinology
Lincoln Park Zoo
Ph: 312-742-2250
srosenb...@lpzoo.org



On Apr 15, 2015, at 4:49 PM, David Duffy 
mailto:ddu...@hawaii.edu>> wrote:

While perusing an abstract in "Nature this week" ,

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7547/full/520266d.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20150416

I  found a button to click called "Article Metrics". Once clicked, I found
it had three different metrics: 1. citations (zero as the article is brand
new, but likely to be frequent in the future), an alimetric score
apparently based on 9 tweets and one reddit, and a map of Twitter
"demographics" (n = 5). The alimetric score " is calculated based on two
main sources of online attention: social media and mainstream news media".

Citations have their problems as a growing literature documents, but
turning over judgement of quality to Twitter and Reddit suggests Nature is
pandering to the standards society uses to judge the Kardasians, Miley
Cyrus and Prince Harry in Las Vegas.

And we want Congress and the public to take science seriously?

David Duffy

--
David Duffy
戴大偉 (Dài Dàwěi)
Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit
Botany
University of Hawaii
3190 Maile Way
Honolulu Hawaii 96822 USA
1-808-956-8218

Re: [ECOLOG-L] Is Nature still a credible journal? Or is this the era of Kardasian science?

[David Duffy]

Oh dear, I apologize if I was not clear. I do not object to using social
media. My concern is with using them as metrics of science quality and more
generally for outreach.

Amongst my concerns are fake and irrelevant postings on Twitter, the
ability to buy likes on Facebook, both censorship of various groups and
spamdexing on Reddit.   Check out the tweets for Origin of the Species.

One obviously wants to push one's presence on social media. Universities
have PR departments that do this with varying degrees of competence. Then
there are people you can pay to help you with this by gaming the system.
Manipulating citation rates already occurs, so if social media become
valued as metrics for science, they will be gamed. Gaming citations
requires a certain degree of effort, papers published over months or years;
gaming social media merely requires a credit card number, a computer and a
few seconds.

Also who are we twittering to? Our friends and colleagues? How is this
outreach to the general public? How many nuances can be contained in 144
words?

A deeper question might be how social media reflect the enduring value of
scientific articles. Citation equations exist to measure impact over time
but social media are by their nature much more immediate. An analogy might
be to movie openings. With a bad film, distributors will try to open in as
many theaters as possible and advertise like crazy, to generate traffic the
first weekend before word gets out that the film stinks. A good paper would
be more like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, persisting for decades. RHPC
has 7 tweets and 61 followers; Fast and Furious has 25.9 K tweets and 43.5
K followers. Will Fast and Furious still be showing in theaters in 30 years
(not to say Fast and Furious is a bad film, I haven't seen it)?

As I said, I am not against social media. I  spent about an hour today
working on my group's Facebook page and, in my other job as president of a
faculty union, we employ two folks to help us with social media. I am
against simply assuming that social media are effective for science, either
as metrics or as outreach. And I have to ask if social media are so
effective for science, why do so many people not believe in evolution or
vaccination, while believing in extraterrestrials, horoscopes, ghosts and
other things that go bump in the night?

David Duffy

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 1:28 PM, Caitlin Littlefield 
wrote:

> As a millennial ecologist(-in-training), I regularly skim through the TOCs
> of most ecological journals, and I certainly see many articles circulated
> through email. But a non-trivial amount of my exposure to new science is
> through the Twitter feeds of the journals themselves, scientific
> organizations, and ecologists I respect. So I'll respectfully disagree
> with your implied conclusion that for science to be "taken seriously", we
> must remain aloof of social media. Furthermore, if social media is an
> avenue for the general public to read about/engage in/comment on science,
> then I do indeed think Tweet-ability can be one metric by which articles
> are assessed. And perhaps it ought to be, if it encourages researchers to
> communicate their science in a way that's accessible to others outside of
> their disciplines, to the general public, and even to the Kardashians.
>
>


-- 
David Duffy
戴大偉 (Dài Dàwěi)
Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit
Botany
University of Hawaii
3190 Maile Way
Honolulu Hawaii 96822 USA
1-808-956-8218

Re: [ECOLOG-L] Is Nature still a credible journal? Or is this the era of Kardasian science?

[Caitlin Littlefield]

As a millennial ecologist(-in-training), I regularly skim through the TOCs 
of most ecological journals, and I certainly see many articles circulated 
through email. But a non-trivial amount of my exposure to new science is 
through the Twitter feeds of the journals themselves, scientific 
organizations, and ecologists I respect. So I'll respectfully disagree 
with your implied conclusion that for science to be "taken seriously", we 
must remain aloof of social media. Furthermore, if social media is an 
avenue for the general public to read about/engage in/comment on science, 
then I do indeed think Tweet-ability can be one metric by which articles 
are assessed. And perhaps it ought to be, if it encourages researchers to 
communicate their science in a way that's accessible to others outside of 
their disciplines, to the general public, and even to the Kardashians.

Re: [ECOLOG-L] Is Nature still a credible journal? Or is this the era of Kardasian science?

[Mitch Cruzan]

I agree completely.  Nature is not the only journal that is exploring 
alternative methods to increase exposure through tweets, fb, etc.  The 
more exposure the better, and all the journals are competing for 
attention.  The bigger problem with flash-science journals like Nature 
and Science is that researchers excited about new results do not always 
carefully consider their manuscripts before submitting.  Consequently, 
these two journals have the highest retraction rates of any in the 
non-medical fields of biology.  While they do have high "impact factors" 
I would argue that these short treatments of results are not as 
influential as papers that are more thorough and thoughtful.

Mitch Cruzan

On 4/15/2015 4:28 PM, Caitlin Littlefield wrote:

As a millennial ecologist(-in-training), I regularly skim through the TOCs
of most ecological journals, and I certainly see many articles circulated
through email. But a non-trivial amount of my exposure to new science is
through the Twitter feeds of the journals themselves, scientific
organizations, and ecologists I respect. So I'll respectfully disagree
with your implied conclusion that for science to be "taken seriously", we
must remain aloof of social media. Furthermore, if social media is an
avenue for the general public to read about/engage in/comment on science,
then I do indeed think Tweet-ability can be one metric by which articles
are assessed. And perhaps it ought to be, if it encourages researchers to
communicate their science in a way that's accessible to others outside of
their disciplines, to the general public, and even to the Kardashians.


--

Mitch Cruzan
Professor of Biology
Portland State University
Department of Biology, SRTC rm 246, PO Box 751
Portland, OR 97207 USA
http://web.pdx.edu/~cruzan/

Re: [ECOLOG-L] Is Nature still a credible journal? Or is this the era of Kardasian science?

[Malcolm McCallum]

I think that all of these metrics are just making a mockery out of the
system.

You know what, my perspective on evaluating publication has changed so
drastically its amazing.

Here is my philosophy:

If someone is doing something and publishing it, they are being productive.
Some folks are only interested in small-time research, and frankly these
things are important.  Other folks are only interested in major studies,
these are important too.

Some people are going to focus on local stuff, others global, others on
stuff in another region or country.

ITS ALL IMPORTANT, from the minor note to the major monograph.

Is a note = to a monograph?  No
Is a paper in herp review = to a paper in Nature?  No.

However, if I have a note that has been cited a dozen times and you have a
Nature article that has not been cited once.what does it mean?

It means both people thought it was important enough to address something
and put it out there so others  know about it.  THat is our job.

Anyone wants to poo poo what another person is doing, maybe they should
first consider that the vast majority of us either lack the health,
capacity, or resources to land in Nature and others among us are not
sufficiently observant nor possess a grasp of the literature that is of
sufficient scope to recognize observations worthy of pubication as an
observation.  So what?  Each has their strenghts and weaknesses.  Each of
should do their best to contribute, even if that means one note every 10
years and nothing else.  You still contributed, and no one has any business
mocking or strutting around

Those who do, succeed.
Those who don't, don't.

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 4:49 PM, David Duffy  wrote:

> While perusing an abstract in "Nature this week" ,
>
>
> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7547/full/520266d.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20150416
>
> I  found a button to click called "Article Metrics". Once clicked, I found
> it had three different metrics: 1. citations (zero as the article is brand
> new, but likely to be frequent in the future), an alimetric score
> apparently based on 9 tweets and one reddit, and a map of Twitter
> "demographics" (n = 5). The alimetric score " is calculated based on two
> main sources of online attention: social media and mainstream news media".
>
> Citations have their problems as a growing literature documents, but
> turning over judgement of quality to Twitter and Reddit suggests Nature is
> pandering to the standards society uses to judge the Kardasians, Miley
> Cyrus and Prince Harry in Las Vegas.
>
> And we want Congress and the public to take science seriously?
>
> David Duffy
>
> --
> David Duffy
> 戴大偉 (Dài Dàwěi)
> Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit
> Botany
> University of Hawaii
> 3190 Maile Way
> Honolulu Hawaii 96822 USA
> 1-808-956-8218
>



-- 
Malcolm L. McCallum, PHD, REP
Environmental Studies Program
Green Mountain College
Poultney, Vermont
Link to online CV and portfolio :
https://www.visualcv.com/malcolm-mc-callum?access=18A9RYkDGxO

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