Gunther Eysenbach MD MPH FACMITwitter: @eysenbach

Editor/Publisher, JMIR Publications @JMedInternetReswww.jmir.org

Professor Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto;

Senior Scientist, Centre for Global eHealth Innovation,Epublishing and Open Access Research Group PI, Consumer Health Informatics & Public Health Informatics Lab

Techna InstituteCo-Director, Communication & Knowledge Translation

Director, Medicine 2.0 Conference Series

Role of Social Media for Filtering and Assessing Research (altmetrics)

http://medicine20congress.com

Medicine 2.0 HawaiiNov 13-14, 2014Abstracts due Mar 12, 2014

Medicine 2.0 EuropeOct 9-10, 2014Abstracts due Mar 12, 2014

What I will talk about

• Social Media as filtering tool• Using these data to develop new metrics

(altmetrics, infodemiology metrics, “twimpact factor”) and to filter research

Social Media Dissemination

Endusers

Scientists, Funders

Social Media Analytics (big data,altmetrics, infodemiology)

Disclosure – Commercial Interests

• Founder, Publisher, CEO of JMIR Publications• Co-founder, CSO of TrendMD (social-media

based filtering and recommendation widget of the literature)

• First open access journal in health informatics/health services research (1999)

• First electronic-only journal in health informatics/health services research

• Among of the first OA journals in medicine (before BMC, PLoS etc), cofounder of OASPA (OA Publisher Assoc)

• No commercial publisher involved, created by scientists for scientists• 6 new sister journals (JMIR Res Protoc, JMIR Mhealth, …)• First ehealth journal publishing daily (since 2013)

• First to systematically collect and analyze altmetrics / social impact metrics (tweets) (since 2008)

• Ranked #1 journal in its field (by impact factor [JIF: 3.8], number of articles published, and social media impact)

JMIR is top-ranked by Impact Factor

…but citation-based metrics such as the Impact Factor are imperfect

• Intransparent, proprietary• Journal-level, not article-level (top journals

publish low-impact work as well)• Not timely (3-year delay) / not real-time• New journals not captured• Very narrow definition of “impact” – impact within scientific community– What about “social impact”? Impact on end-users

and the public?

The Filtering Role of Social Media

…complementing the filtering role of journals

J Med Internet Reswww.jmir.org Twitter: @JMedInternetRes

“Top tweeted” articles

Proposed (and used) new metrics: “Twimpact Factor” & “Twindex”

Proposed metrics

• “Twimpact Factor”: absolute number of tweets within 7 days after publication

• “Twindex”: rank percentile of the article by twimpact factor compared to a comparator

Eysenbach G. Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact Based on Twitter and Correlation with Traditional Metrics of Scientific ImpactJ Med Internet Res 2011;13(4):e123. URL: http://www.jmir.org/2011/4/e123/

What is the correlation between social media metrics and traditional metrics?

Eysenbach G. Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact Based on Twitter and Correlation with Traditional Metrics of Scientific ImpactJ Med Internet Res 2011;13(4):e123. URL: http://www.jmir.org/2011/4/e123/

Correlation between tweetations (after 7 days) and citations (17-20 mo later)

Eysenbach G. Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact Based on Twitter and Correlation with Traditional Metrics of Scientific ImpactJ Med Internet Res 2011;13(4):e123. URL: http://www.jmir.org/2011/4/e123/

“Twimpact Factor” predicts citations

• Highly tweeted articles were 11 times more likely to be highly cited than less-tweeted articles

• Top-cited articles can be predicted from top-tweeted articles with 93% specificity and 75% sensitivity WITHIN THE FIRST 3 DAYS OF PUBLICATION. “

Eysenbach G. Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact Based on Twitter and Correlation with Traditional Metrics of Scientific ImpactJ Med Internet Res 2011;13(4):e123. URL: http://www.jmir.org/2011/4/e123/

Timely: We can measure social [media] impact within 3 days

Eysenbach G. Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact Based on Twitter and Correlation with Traditional Metrics of Scientific ImpactJ Med Internet Res 2011;13(4):e123. URL: http://www.jmir.org/2011/4/e123/

Citation impact vs social [media] impact

Eysenbach G. Can Tweets Predict Citations? Metrics of Social Impact Based on Twitter and Correlation with Traditional Metrics of Scientific ImpactJ Med Internet Res 2011;13(4):e123. URL: http://www.jmir.org/2011/4/e123/

Main limitations/questions of the “twimpact factor”

• Generalizable to other journals?• How robust are these findings over time

(manipulations, changed behavior of scientists)

Btw: The “twimpact” paper was highly tweeted…

… and in <2 yrs accumulated almost as many citations as a similar 9 year-old BMJ paper

TrendMD• Filtering and literature

alerts based on social media activity

• Social ranking of articles• Recommendations of

related articles based on content similarity and social media mentions (widget on journal publisher site)

Conclusions

• New metrics are needed to filter what researchers should pay attention to – social media metrics can complement citation metrics

• Twimpact Factor and Twindex are new metrics (“altmetrics”) which have been shown to be correlated to citation metrics (Eysenbach 2011)

• Altmetrics.com, impact story, TrendMD are emerging tools

Thank you!

FundingChange Foundation, Canadian Institutes for Health Research, NSERC, European Union, SSHRC

Dr Gunther Eysenbach

@eysenbach, @medicine20, @JMedInternetResEmail: geysenba at uhnres.utoronto.ca or @gmail.com,

My peer-reviewed Journal(s): http://www.jmir.orgMy Blog: http://gunther-eysenbach.blogspot.com

My Conference Series: http://www.medicine20congress.comJoin us at #med2 Medicine 2.0 in Hawaii, Nov 22-23 2014 !!

My Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/eysen