Understanding the Societal Impact of Research Through Social Media
Juan Pablo Alperin, Vincent Larivière, Stefanie Haustein, Katherine Reilly, Florence Millerand
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
2016 – 2019
- Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., Farley, A., West, J., & Haustein, S. (2018). The state of OA: A large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. PeerJ, 6, e4375.
- Alperin, J. P., Gomez, C. J., & Haustein, S. (2019). Identifying diffusion patterns of research articles on Twitter: A case study of online engagement with open access articles. Public Understanding of Science, 28(1), 2-18.
- Alperin, J. P., Hanson, E. W., Shores, K., & Haustein, S. (2017). Twitter bot surveys: A discrete choice experiment to increase response rates. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Media & Society, 1-4.
- Enkhbayar, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2018). Challenges of capturing engagement on Facebook for Altmetrics. 23rd International Conference on Science and Technology (STI 2018) Proceedings, 1460-1469.
- Barata, G., Shores, K., & Alperin, J. P. (2018). Local chatter or international buzz? Language differences on posts about Zika research on Twitter and Facebook. PLOS ONE, 13(1), e0190482.
- Haustein, S. (2019). Scholarly Twitter metrics. In W. Glänzel, H. F. Moed, U. Schmoch, & M. Thelwall (Eds.), Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators (pp. 729-760). Springer International Publishing.
- Reilly, K. M. A., & Alperin, J. P. (2021). A stewardship approach to theorizing open data for development. In Open Data for Development. The MIT Press.
As the communication of research increasingly takes place on social media platforms, there is enormous potential to capture and analyze digital traces left by scholars. This offers, for the first time, the opportunity to study at large scale—using both quantitative and qualitative methods—the processes of knowledge dissemination and co-creation between academia and the public. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the authors of this SSHRC-funded project asked: What is the nature and extent of societal impact of research that can be observed through the public’s engagement with research on social media?
The Intellectual Properties of Learning: A Pre-History from Saint Jerome to John Locke
John Willinsky
Stanford Humanities Center
2009-2016
* John Willinsky, (2017). The intellectual properties of learning: A pre-history from Saint Jerome to John Locke (open access edition). University of Chicago Press.
This book-length project seeks to establish how a prototypical form of intellectual property emerged from within medieval monasteries and cathedral schools, and all the more so through the universities, from the medieval to Early Modern era. These learned properties were, and often continue to be, distinguished by economic and legal, as well as textual and cultural, qualities. This prehistory culminates with Locke’s theory of property and early copyright law at the turn of the seventeenth century. Both can be shown to support distinctions that still set learned intellectual properties apart from other sorts, and that tend to be lost sight of amid the current intellectual-property gold rush. View the project in progress and related publications.
Open Innovation in Latin American Scholarly Communication: Planning for Greater Integration and Impact
Juan Pablo Alperin, Gustavo Fischman, and John Willinsky
International Development Research Centre
2010-2014
- Fischman, G., Alperin, J. P., and Willinsky, J. (2011). Viejos y nuevos desafíos para las publicaciones académicas en Español: Old and new challenges for scholarly communications in Spanish. In A. M. Cetto, Alonso Gamboa, José Octavio (comps.), Calidad e impacto de la revista Iberoamericana [En línea]. México: Latindex UNAM.
- Fischman, G., Alperin, J. P., and Willinsky, J. (2010). Visibility and quantity in Spanish-speaking Latin American scholarly publishing. Information Technologies and International Development, 6(4).
Latin American scholars are putting higher proportions of their scholarship online, free of charge, and free of most copyright restrictions, than scholars from any other part of the world. It is within this context that PKP seeks to build on the experience gained through previous collaborations and knowledge with relevant institutions in the region. The authors of this study analyzed Open Science, Open Access and Open Source Software (OS/OA/OSS) approaches toward two goals: a) directed toward exploring emerging challenges in the production, circulation, and utilization of scientific knowledge within and outside the scholarly community and; b) promoting greater efficiencies in communication in scholarly practice that have been shown to advance scientific production, circulation, and utilization of knowledge.
Public Access to Health Research
Cheryl Holzmeyer, Laura Moorhead, Lauren Maggio, John Willinsky
2011-2014
- Maggio, L. A., Moorhead, L., & Willinsky, J. (2017). A qualitative study of physicians’ varied uses of biomedical research. BMJ Open (British Medical Journal), 6(11).
- Moorhead, L., Holzmeyer, C., Maggio., L.A. , Steinberg, R. M., & Willinsky, J. (2015). In an age of open access to research policies: Physician and public health NGO staff research use and policy awareness. PLOS One 10.7: e0129708.
- O’Keeffe, J., Willinsky, J. & Maggio, L. (2011). Public access and use of health research: An exploratory study of the NIH Public Access Policy. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 13(4).
In 2008, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) instituted a Public Access Policy that requires recipients of NIH funding to make all resulting peer-reviewed journal articles publicly accessible within a year of publication. The study tested the hypothesis that, if health personnel are provided with relatively complete online access to the primary research literature, their use of research evidence will increase, as this use contributes to their professional practice and personal learning. It involved two professional communities, family physicians and non-profit health organization (NGO) staff, who advocate for public health and policy change. A sample of 100 family physicians and 50 NGO health organizations were provided with access to a point of care (POC) research summary service (UpToDate) and, as a proxy of future public access policy results, the journal collection of Stanford University Library. Participants were debriefed on the why and how of their research use, and a secondary analysis was conducted to determine demographic, technical, and training factors that affect information access and utilization, with the intent of informing policy-making in the sciences, education, and other areas.
Major Science Initiative
In partnership with Érudit, PKP has been recognized as a Major Science Initiative in Canada, the only Humanities and Social Science project in this category. Funding will help to ensure the maintenance of PKP as a sustainable research and development facility serving the needs of researchers in Canada and internationally. To further our work, we have created the Coalition Publi.ca, which formalizes the partnership between our two organizations.
Review, Promotion, and Tenure
Juan Pablo Alperin, Erin McKiernan, Meredith Niles, Lesley Schimanski, Carol Muñoz Nieves, Lisa Matthias, Michelle La, Esteban Morales, Diane (DeDe) Dawson
2016-2020
- Dawson, D., Morales, E., McKiernan, E.C., Schimanski, L., Niles, M.T., Alperin, J.P. (2022). The role of collegiality in academic review, promotion, and tenure. PLOS ONE, 17(4), e0265506
- Morales, E., McKiernan, E. C., Niles, M. T., Schimanski, L., & Alperin, J. P. (2021). How faculty define quality, prestige, and impact of academic journals. PLOS ONE, 16(10), e0257340.
- Alperin, J. P., La, M., McKiernan, E. C., Niles, M. T., & Schimanski, L. A. (2020). The value of data and other non-traditional scholarly outputs in academic review, promotion, and tenure in Canada and the United States. Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management.
- Niles, M. T., Schimanski, L. A., McKiernan, E. C., & Alperin, J. P. (2020). Why we publish where we do: Faculty publishing values and their relationship to review, promotion and tenure expectations. PLOS ONE, 15(3), e0228914
- McKiernan, E. C., Schimanski, L. A., Muñoz Nieves, C., Matthias, L., Niles, M. T., & Alperin, J. P. (2019). Use of the Journal Impact Factor in academic review, promotion, and tenure evaluations. ELife, 8, e47338.
- Alperin, J. P., Muñoz Nieves, C., Schimanski, L. A., Fischman, G. E., Niles, M. T., & McKiernan, E. C. (2019). How significant are the public dimensions of faculty work in review, promotion and tenure documents? ELife, 8, e42254.
- Schimanski, L. A., & Alperin, J. P. (2018). The evaluation of scholarship in academic promotion and tenure processes: Past, present, and future. F1000Research, 7, 1605.
- Alperin, J.P., Muñoz Nieves, C., Schimanski, L., McKiernan, E.C., Niles, M.T. (2018) Terms and concepts found in tenure and promotion guidelines from the US and Canada [dataset].
The review, promotion, and tenure (RPT) process is central to academic life and workplace advancement. It influences where faculty direct their attention, research, and publications. By unveiling the RPT process, we can inform actions that lead towards a greater opening of research. To do so, we collected and analyzed more than 850 RPT guidelines from 129 research institutions across Canada and the US. We assessed the degree to which they included guidelines specific to open access, open data, and open education, and how non-traditional outputs are evaluated in the RPT process. We also explored the use of common metrics and research terms (e.g., Journal Impact Factor, “quality,” “prestige”) in these documents, analyzing how often they defined and mentioned these controversial terms. Finally, we investigated faculty members’ perceptions about the RPT process, including what publishing strategies they believe will be rewarded and how this influences their dissemination choices, as well as how “collegiality” is defined and used in the tenure process.
Top right: Infographic artfully crafted by Minh Ngo / The Visual Scribe (originally one piece landscape orientation, split in two and stacked for this website).
Top right: Infographic artfully crafted by Minh Ngo / The Visual Scribe (originally one piece landscape orientation, split in two and stacked for this website).
Preprint Uptake and Use
ASAPbio and ScholCommLab; Juan Pablo Alperin, Lauren Maggio, Joseph Costello, Mario Malički, Janina Sarol, Naomi Penfold
2019-2020
- Malički, M., Costello, J., Alperin, J. P., & Maggio, L. A. (2020). From amazing work to I beg to differ – analysis of bioRxiv preprints that received one public comment till September 2019. BioRxiv, 2020.10.14.340083.
- Malički, M., Jerončić, A., ter Riet, G., Bouter, L. M., Ioannidis, J. P. A., Goodman, S. N., & Aalbersberg, Ij. J. (2020). Preprint servers’ policies, submission requirements, and transparency in reporting and research integrity recommendations. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 324(18), 1901–1903.
- Malički, M., Costello, J., Alperin, J. P., & Maggio, L. A. (2021). Analysis of single comments left for bioRxiv preprints till September 2019. Biochemia Medica, 31(2), 0–0.
In this research project, the ScholCommLab and scientist-driven non-profit ASAPbio teamed up to better understand the status of preprint adoption and impact in specific research communities. The project aimed to consolidate, analyze, and map data documenting the adoption of preprinting in specific communities. As a result, the team hopes to situate conservations about preprinting and best practice among researchers in their networks.
CyberInfrastructure Grant
Also in partnership with Érudit, this grant funds the development of the OJS beacon to help us better understand and serve the globally distributed OJS community. our work aims to better automate and edit the production of JATS-XML galley files and their integration into the OJS workflow, and the creation of alternative forms of metrics, including our work on Paperbuzz.