Interdisciplinary research and societal impact: analysis of social media

Álvarez-Bornstein, Belén and Montesi, Michela Interdisciplinary research and societal impact: analysis of social media., 2019 [Preprint]

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English abstract

Currently, interdisciplinary research (IR) is considered to have a higher potential for societal impact than monodisciplinary research, as it addresses real world problems from different and more complex perspectives. However, the evidence of a relationship between IR and research impact is scanty. This paper aims to see whether the attention that IR receives on social media is somehow different from monodisciplinary conventional research. For this purpose, we analyze mentions to the Spanish scientific production published between 2012 and 2016 and recorded in Web of Science (WoS) on several social media, including Twitter, blogs, Wikipedia, news, and policy reports, using Altmetric.com. Articles are grouped into 175 disciplines, according to the WoS classification system, including the Multidisciplinary category, which we take as an approximation to IR. Additionally, blogs citing the scientific literature published on journals of the category Multidisciplinary were compared to those of Internal Medicine and Ecology, in order to study comparatively the authorship and nature of the blogs, and the commenting activity they support. Results show that articles published in the category Multidisciplinary are among the most cited on social media, especially on blogs and news. The analysis of blogs points to a higher implication of actors outside the academic community with research published on journals of the category Multidisciplinary.

Spanish abstract

En la actualidad se considera que la investigación interdisciplinaria (IID) tiene un mayor potencial de repercusión en la sociedad que la monodisciplinaria por abordar problemas del mundo real desde perspectivas diferentes y de mayor complejidad. Sin embargo, la evidencia de esta relación entre IID e impacto investigador es escasa. El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo comprobar si la IID tiene un comportamiento diferente a la monodisciplinaria con respecto a la atención que recibe en los medios sociales. Para ello, se analizan las menciones en varios medios sociales (Twitter, blogs, Wikipedia, noticias e informes políticos), a través de la base de datos Altmetric.com, de la producción científica española de los años 2012-16 indexada en la Web of Science (WoS). Los artículos fueron agrupados en 175 disciplinas, según la clasificación temática de WoS en base a las revistas de publicación, incluyendo a la categoría temática “multidisciplinary”. Adicionalmente, los blogs con referencias a los artículos publicados en la categoría de Ciencias Multidisciplinares se compararon con los de las categorías de Medicina Interna y Ecología, para estudiar comparativamente la autoría y naturaleza del blog, así como la presencia de comentarios. Los resultados muestran que los artículos publicados en revistas de la categoría Ciencias Multidisciplinares están entre lo más citados en los medios sociales, sobre todo en blogs y noticias. El análisis de los blogs pone de manifiesto una mayor implicación de actores ajenos a la comunidad científica con la investigación publicada en revistas de la categoría “multidisciplinary”.

Item type: Preprint
Keywords: social media, societal impact, interdisciplinary research, alternative metrics
Subjects: B. Information use and sociology of information > BC. Information in society.
B. Information use and sociology of information > BG. Information dissemination and diffusion.
Depositing user: Michela Montesi
Date deposited: 12 Jul 2019 09:55
Last modified: 12 Jul 2019 09:55
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/38631

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