ArticleInternational journal of public health2016
If I tweet will you cite? The effect of social media exposure of articles on downloads and citations.
Article in International journal of public health, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The Use of Twitter by Medical Journals: Systematic Review of the Literature.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Pooled it
- Is the open access citation advantage real? A systematic review of the citation of open access and subscription-based articles.PloS one · 2021Pooled it
- The Use of Social Media to Increase the Impact of Health Research: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Pooled it
- Does social media promotion influence citation counts? A long-term follow-up to a randomised trial in a general neurosurgical journal.Neurosurgical review · 2025Trial
- A randomized controlled trial of social media promotion in neurosurgical publishing.Neurosurgical review · 2024Trial
- Is it worth publishing Open Access? - the scientific impact of Open Access publications in the field of medical education.Medical education online · 2026Article
- The academic impact of Open Science: a scoping review.Royal Society open science · 2025Review
- Bibliometric top ten healthcare-related ChatGPT publications in the first ChatGPT anniversary.Narra J · 2024Article
- The impact of Twitter/X promotion on visibility of research articles: Results of the #TweetTheJournal study.International journal of cardiology. Heart & vasculature · 2024Article
- Social media: Are Twitter/X influencers in cardiology really influencing?International journal of cardiology. Heart & vasculature · 2024Article
- Article
- Article-level metrics: A new approach to quantify reach and impact of published research.Journal of orthopaedics · 2023Article
- MonkeyPox2022Tweets: A Large-Scale Twitter Dataset on the 2022 Monkeypox Outbreak, Findings from Analysis of Tweets, and Open Research Questions.Infectious disease reports · 2022Article
- Social media usage to share information in communication journals: An analysis of social media activity and article citations.PloS one · 2022Article
- Disseminating implementation science: Describing the impact of animations shared via social media.PloS one · 2022Article
- Social media for cardiovascular journals: State of the art review.American heart journal plus : cardiology research and practice · 2021Article
- The impact of Twitter promotion on future citation rates: The #TweetTheJournal study.International journal of cardiology. Heart & vasculature · 2021Article
- If I tweet will you cite later? Follow-up on the effect of social media exposure on article downloads and citations.International journal of public health · 2020Observational
- Article
- An Overview of Social Media Use in the Field of Public Health Nutrition: Benefits, Scope, Limitations, and a Latin American Experience.Preventing chronic disease · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesWe sought to investigate whether exposing scientific papers to social media (SM) has an effect on article downloads and citations.
methodsWe 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.
results130 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.
conclusionsSM 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.
Indexed as
Identifiers
27193574What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.