If I tweet will you cite? The effect of social media exposure of articles on downloads and citations

Thomy Tonia (), Herman Van Oyen, Anke Berger, Christian Schindler and Nino Künzli
Additional contact information
Thomy Tonia: University of Bern
Herman Van Oyen: Public Health and Surveillance, Scientific Institute of Public Health
Anke Berger: University of Bern
Christian Schindler: Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute
Nino Künzli: Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute

International Journal of Public Health, 2016, vol. 61, issue 4, No 14, 513-520

Abstract: Abstract Objectives We sought to investigate whether exposing scientific papers to social media (SM) has an effect on article downloads and citations. Methods We randomized all International Journal of Public Health (IJPH) original articles published between December 2012 and December 2014 to SM exposure (blog post, Twitter and Facebook) or no exposure at three different time points after first online publication. Results 130 papers (SM exposure = 65, control = 65) were randomized. The number of downloads did not differ significantly between groups (p = 0.60) nor did the number of citations (p = 0.88). Adjusting for length of observation and paper’s geographical origin did not change these results. There was no difference in the number of downloads and citations between the SM exposure and control group when we stratified for open access status. The number of downloads and number of citations were significantly correlated in both groups. Conclusions SM exposure did not have a significant effect on traditional impact metrics, such as downloads and citations. However, other metrics may measure the added value that social media might offer to a scientific journal, such as wider dissemination.

Keywords: Social media; Citations; Downloads; Bibliometrics; Twitter; Facebook (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00038-016-0831-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ijphth:v:61:y:2016:i:4:d:10.1007_s00038-016-0831-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/00038

DOI: 10.1007/s00038-016-0831-y

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Public Health is currently edited by Thomas Kohlmann, Nino Künzli and Andrea Madarasova Geckova

More articles in International Journal of Public Health from Springer, Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().