Exploring country's preference over news mentions to academic papers

Houqiang Yu, Longfei Li, Xueting Cao and Tao Chen

Journal of Informetrics, 2022, vol. 16, issue 4

Abstract: News mentions to academic papers has provided an important channel for research to yield impact on broad audience in the society, and is particularly useful in scholarly communication, scientific outreach and altmetrics. Unlike academic paper, news articles are often influenced by social factors such as culture, ideology and geography. It is therefore uncertain whether news mentions to academic paper is valid for evaluative purpose as expected by altmetrics studies. In response, this study has conducted large scale statistical analysis to explore country's preference over news mentions, based on the assumption that if news mentions to academic paper is not (or weakly) influenced by social factors, no obvious country's preference would be observed, and the vice versa. The major findings are: (1) From the macro perspective, overall distribution of news mentions is highly imbalanced, with several developed countries taking the dominant position. However, no obvious preference towards domestic papers was observed. (2) From the micro perspective, based on the ZINB test results, news from all countries have more positively mentioned domestic papers and simultaneously shown preference over papers from certain countries. (3) In terms of disciplinary comparison, disciplinary differences were observed in the impact strength and specific preference. These results suggest that in micro level country's preference exist for news mentions to academic papers, but in macro level, country's preference is insignificant. Therefore, it is suggested that news mentions can be used for assessing purpose in the macro level.

Keywords: Altmetrics; News mentions; News altmetric indicators; Country's preference; Academic Evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:infome:v:16:y:2022:i:4:s1751157722000992

DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2022.101347

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