Social media release increases dissemination of original articles in the clinical pain sciences

Abstract

A barrier to dissemination of research is that it depends on the end-user searching for or 'pulling' relevant knowledge from the literature base. Social media instead 'pushes' relevant knowledge straight to the end-user, via blogs and sites such as Facebook and Twitter. That social media is very effective at improving dissemination seems well accepted, but, remarkably, there is no evidence to support this claim. We aimed to quantify the impact of social media release on views and downloads of articles in the clinical pain sciences. Sixteen PLOS ONE articles were blogged and released via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and ResearchBlogging.org on one of two randomly selected dates. The other date served as a control. The primary outcomes were the rate of HTML views and PDF downloads of the article, over a seven-day period. The critical result was an increase in both outcome variables in the week after the blog post and social media release. The mean ± SD rate of HTML views in the week after the social media release was 18±18 per day, whereas the rate during the other three weeks was no more than 6±3 per day. The mean ± SD rate of PDF downloads in the week after the social media release was 4±4 per day, whereas the rate during the other three weeks was less than 1±1 per day (p<0.05 for all comparisons). However, none of the recognized measures of social media reach, engagement or virality related to either outcome variable, nor to citation count one year later (p>0.3 for all). We conclude that social media release of a research article in the clinical pain sciences increases the number of people who view or download that article, but conventional social media metrics are unrelated to the effect.

Figure 1. Terms and definitions.

Key concepts concerning social media metrics and what is arguably true research impact – achieving shifting practice or thinking, as distinct from the conventional although controversial measure of research impact - citations. We took dissemination of the research article, as measured by the number of unique users who viewed the HTML or downloaded the PDF of the article, as the most proximal estimate of true impact that we could measure. As impact is likely to reflect a proportion of dissemination, so too does dissemination reflect a small proportion of the social media metrics commonly used to reflect impact. The results of our study show clearly that although social medial release increases dissemination, the social media metrics do not relate to dissemination, nor to citation count a year later.

Figure 2. Social media release of articles.

Days of the social media release for each article (A–P) are shown by green cells. The randomly selected control days are shown by black cells. The period during which PLOS citation tracking was down and therefore data are missing, is shown by blue cells.

Figure 3. The effect of social medial release on HTML views of the original article.

The rate of HTML views of each research article on which a social media release was based, for the week either side of two randomly selected dates. The data for the control date are on the left and the data for the social medial release date are on the right. Note the systematic increase in rate of HTML views from the week before the social media release to the week after it.

Figure 4. The effect of social medial release on PDF downloads of the original article.

The rate of PDF downloads of each research article on which a social media release was based, for the week either side of two randomly selected dates. The data for the control date are on the left and the data for the social medial release date are on the right. Note the systematic increase in rate of PDF downloads from the week before the social media release to the week after it.