A lecture I gave in the International Conference on Science and the Internet 2012 (#cosci12), August 3, 2012.

1. CHARACTERISTICS OF BLOGS,
BLOGGERS AND SELF-CITATION IN
THE SCIENCE BLOGOSPHERE
Hadas Shema, Judit Bar-Ilan and Mike
Thelwall
CoScI 2012 : Conference on Science and the
Internet 2012

2. Post-Publication Peer Review
• Wolfe-Simon et al. (2011). A Bacterium That Can Grow by
Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus. Science (published
online in December 2, 2010)
• Extensively criticized in Blogs and Twitter (See “Arsenic
Bacteria link-dump,” Blog Around the Clock). #arseniclife
• 8 comments eventually published by Science on May 27,
2011
• Article mentioned in about 1,330 blog posts (Google Blog
Search, July 2012, for exact title)

3. Detective Work
• A “Citation Cartel” discovered by blogger Phil Davis from
the Scholarly Kitchen (“The emergence of a Citation Cartel,”
Davis, P. 2012, Apr 10).
• Review articles written to increase journals’ impact factors
and published in other journals.
• Three out of the four offenders were suspended from the
JCR (“Citation cartel journals denied 2011 Impact Factor,” Davis, P.
2012, June 29).
• Two articles retracted due to citation manipulation (“A first?
Papers retracted for citation manipulation,” Oransky, I. ,2012 July 5)

4. ResearchBlogging.Org
• Aggregates blog posts citing peer-reviewed research.
• “ResearchBlogging.org allows readers to easily find
blog posts about serious peer-reviewed research,
instead of just news reports and press releases.”

5. Blog Citations – A Transition Phase

6. First Sample
• 126 non-commercial blogs, by one or two
authors, with more than 20 entries posted at RB
during 2010
• Reviewed journals based on last five posts in
each blog

7. Most cited journals according to number
of blog citations

8. @DrVes: Research Bloggers show a
preference for papers from high-
impact journals - just like everyone
else on earth

9. Mendeley and WoS Ranking

10. Self-Citation in Blogs

11. Second Sample
• Four RB categories
• Computer Science/Engineering,
• Ecology/Conservation,
• Philosophy
• Mathematics
• Only blogs and posts with known authors

12. Quotes from self-citing bloggers
“I am a coauthor on a new paper in PLoS Computational
Biology I thought I would promote here.” Jonathan Eisen,
Tree of Life
“What did my work show? Deep-sea nematodes have a
complex evolutionary history…” Holly Bik, Deep Sea New
“Yay! First paper of my postdoc is out in the August 2011
issue of Global Change Biology! Woohoo! So, what have I
been doing for the past few years of my life? In brief
summary: Kelp. Food webs. Climate change. A potent
combination.” Jeremy Yoder, I'm a chordata! urochordata!

13. Posts and self-citing posts
Category posts self-citing posts
Ecology/Conservation 612 31(5%)
Computer 407 35(9%)
Science/Engineering
Philosophy 182 17(9%)
Mathematics 173 18(10%)

14. Bloggers and self-citers
Category Bloggers Self-citers
Ecology/Conservation 132 17(13%)
Computer 93 19(20%)
Science/Engineering
Philosophy 64 11(17%)
Mathematics 89 8(9%)

15. Gender Distribution Among Bloggers

16. Comparison Education

17. Limitations
• RB blogs only
• Anonymous bloggers
• Relatively small number of self-citers
• Blogger does not always equals peer-
reviewed author
• Four disciplines
• Based on Web profiles

18. Overall Findings
• The self-citation rate was low and
varied by category.
• Self-citers were a more homogenous
group than the rest of the RB
population

19. THANK YOU