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
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
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
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,
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
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
