International Journal of Information Science and Management (Jun 2017)
Discussion and Recommendation in Social Scientific Spaces: Two Factors Correlated with the Impact factor of Scientific Publications
Abstract
A review on previous literature shows that there is a correlation between discussion and recommendation. Therefore, we aimed to assess the relationship between these two metrics in four systems (Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed Central, and CrossRef) simultaneously and separately. This was a descriptive correlational study on 90728 research articles published in seven biomedical journals in the PLOS system during 2009-2013. The sample size was calculated based on the Cochrane formula to be 1892 articles. For data collection, PLOS system was used which enables free access to the articles of important biomedical journals. This system includes 7 journals cited from 2003. Data were analyzed usingSPSSsoftware, version21. Inthis study, we found a negative and statistically significant correlation between discussion on Twitter and the citation-based systems. We found no correlation between discussion on Facebook and citation. On the other hand, we found a positive and statistically significant correlation between recommendation by F1000 and citation. We found that discussion on virtual networks and recommendation are two types of feedback in virtual environments. However, among the various systems, the F1000 and Wikipedia were able to provide significant feedback leading to citation.
