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Using Twitter™ to drive research impact: A discussion of strategies, opportunities and challenges

Overview of attention for article published in International Journal of Nursing Studies, February 2016
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • One of the highest-scoring outputs from this source (#9 of 2,596)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (99th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (99th percentile)

Mentioned by

blogs
1 blog
twitter
723 X users
facebook
8 Facebook pages
googleplus
1 Google+ user

Citations

dimensions_citation
78 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
261 Mendeley
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Title
Using Twitter™ to drive research impact: A discussion of strategies, opportunities and challenges
Published in
International Journal of Nursing Studies, February 2016
DOI 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2016.02.004
Pubmed ID
Authors

Katy Schnitzler, Nigel Davies, Fiona Ross, Ruth Harris

Abstract

Researchers have always recognised the importance of disseminating the findings of their work, however, recently the need to proactively plan and drive the impact of those findings on the wider society has become a necessity. Firstly, this is because funders require evidence of return from investment and secondly and crucially because national research assessments are becoming powerful determinants of future funding. In research studies associated with nursing, impact needs to be demonstrated by showing the effect on a range of stakeholders including service users, patients, carers, the nursing workforce and commissioners. Engaging these groups is a well-known challenge influenced by lack of access to academic journals, lack of time to read long complex research papers and lack of opportunities to interact directly with the researchers. This needs to be addressed urgently to enable nursing research to increase the impact that it has on health delivery and the work of clinical practitioners. Social media is potentially a novel way of enabling research teams to both communicate about research as studies progress and to disseminate findings and research funders are increasingly using it to publicise information about research programmes and studies they fund. A search of the healthcare literature reveals that advice and guidance on the use of social media for research studies is not well understood or exploited by the research community. This paper, therefore, explores how using social networking platforms, notably Twitter™ offers potential new ways for communicating research findings, accessing diverse and traditionally hard-to-reach audiences, knowledge exchange at an exponential rate, and enabling new means of capturing and demonstrating research impact. The paper discusses approaches to initiate the setup of social networking platforms in research projects and considers the practical challenges of using Twitter™ in nursing and healthcare research. The discussion is illuminated with examples from our current research. In summary, we suggest that the use of social media micro-blogging platforms is a contemporary, fast, easy and cost effective way to augment existing ways of disseminating research which helps drive impact.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 723 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 261 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United Kingdom 7 3%
United States 4 2%
Spain 2 <1%
Australia 1 <1%
South Africa 1 <1%
Canada 1 <1%
Austria 1 <1%
Netherlands 1 <1%
Gibraltar 1 <1%
Other 0 0%
Unknown 242 93%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 39 15%
Researcher 36 14%
Student > Master 34 13%
Student > Bachelor 22 8%
Student > Doctoral Student 14 5%
Other 62 24%
Unknown 54 21%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Social Sciences 33 13%
Nursing and Health Professions 32 12%
Medicine and Dentistry 30 11%
Computer Science 24 9%
Business, Management and Accounting 11 4%
Other 60 23%
Unknown 71 27%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 331. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 12 November 2022.
All research outputs
#101,121
of 25,513,063 outputs
Outputs from International Journal of Nursing Studies
#9
of 2,596 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#1,715
of 311,920 outputs
Outputs of similar age from International Journal of Nursing Studies
#1
of 49 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,513,063 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,596 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.2. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 311,920 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 49 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.