Data was taken on journals that publish only ecological research. Twitter activity (number of tweets, number of users, and reach) was taken as well as citation rates of articles and impact factors of journals (specifically 5-year impact factors).  This included 20 journals and 1600 articles published between 2012 and 2014.  Citation counts were taken from Thompson-Reuters Web of Science™ (WS) database, and Twitter activity was taken from Altmetrics. Data from Twitter were from the dates of February 1 and April 5 of 2016. 

University of California, Berkeley

This study looked at the relationship between Twitter activity and research articles and found a strong positive relation between Twitter activity on an article and the number of citations the article has. They found that Twitter activity was a greater predictor of citations than impact factor was. They also discussed how Twitter activity was not based on impact factor, removing that confound. 

Twitter Predicts Citation Rates of Ecological Research

Peoples, B. K., Midway, S. R., Sackett, D., Lynch, A., & Cooney, P. B. (2016). Twitter predicts citation rates of ecological research. PloS one, 11(11), e0166570. 

A generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) was used to look at the effects on Twitter activity on citations, while looking at possible confounds such as impact factor and time since publication. Citation rates were modeled as a random variable of a negative binomial distribution. An information theoretic framework was used to compare Twitter activity, impact factor, and time since publication on the citation rates. Specifically, the dredge function was used in R to calculate weights for GLMMs of possible combinations of the variables. Weights were summed and those with greater sums were considered to be more important. 

Mixed effects models were also used to look at the effects of impact factor on Twitter activity. 

Twitter Predicts Citation Rates of Ecological
Research Methodology

- Twitter activity is a significant positive predictor of citation rates (more so than impact factor)
- number of Tweets and timesince publication were significantly related to citation rates
- Twitter activity was not driven by impact factor
- impact factor had weak correlation with Twitter activity, and did not have significant effects on number of Tweets or reach
- "Articles in impactful journals can become heavily cited, but articles in journals with lower impact factors can generate considerable Twitter activity and also become heavily cited"

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