Pacher, A. (2024). Scientific Journals’ Twitter Accounts and Impact Factor: A Causal Analysis Based on a Synthetic Control. In I. Frommholz, P. Mayr, G. Cabanac, S. Verberne, & J. Brennan (Eds.), Proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Bibliometric-enhanced Information Retrieval, co-located with 45th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2023) (pp. 90–100). CEUR-WS.org. https://doi.org/10.34726/5446
E040-03-3 - Fachgruppe Szientometrie und Datenvisualisierung
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Published in:
Proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Bibliometric-enhanced Information Retrieval, co-located with 45th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2023)
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Volume:
3617
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Date (published):
15-Jan-2024
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Event name:
13th International Workshop on Bibliometric-enhanced Information Retrieval co-located with 45th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2023)
Does a journal’s actively curated Twitter account cause a rise in Journal Impact Factor (JIF)? The present paper analyses this causal assumption by looking at the JIF trajectories of various journals that set up a Twitter account in 2015. Having identified one suitable journal (namely, International Sociology), a counterfactual unit was generated with the the synthetic control method, a control unit that resembles the same journal but one that would not have registered a Twitter account in 2015. That control unit is synthetised via dozens of other journals that exhibit similar characteristics like the treated unit. The paper finds that the actual International Sociology enjoyed higher JIFs than its counterfactual control unit after 2015. The scale of this effect, however, is negligible and the finding is statistically insignificant. The main result of this paper, therefore, is that the null hypothesis claiming no-effect-of-Twitter-upon-JIF cannot be rejected.
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Research Areas:
Beyond TUW-research foci: 90% Information Systems Engineering: 10%
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Science Branch:
5090 - Andere Sozialwissenschaften: 10% 1020 - Informatik: 80% 5080 - Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften: 10%
CC BY 4.0
