Science Mapping and Personal Research Influence

Scientists contribute daily to the world knowledge base by publishing and presenting data related to their own field of research. However, pushing a publication out does not intrinsically provide insight as to who is utilizing the data, and for what purposes.

Evaluating the impact of a paper or publication requires a broader perspective and looking at the larger picture within the map of science provides a better understanding of the impression the work has made.

Science mapping enables you to determine what fields outside of your own are interested in your work by utilizing citations and links between different fields of research and ultimately provides insight on where to target promotion and marketing of your publications.

Science mapping is a data visualization tool that helps scientists compare their work and their field of research in relation to current research and development trends.

Additionally, science mapping extends a scientist’s field of vision and allows them to understand the evolution of their research, helps them map future paths of study, and helps to expand their research horizons to encompass other disciplines.

Science mapping also allows a scientist to evaluate the impact of their research field on the general knowledge ecosystem; it provides a picture of the interconnectedness of different fields of study or lack thereof.

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Co-citation map of the citing papers of the McDonald SB with links indicating co-citation relations. License

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This visualization, created by James Moody and the team at the Duke Network Analysis Center, links faculty from across schools and departments who serve together on Ph.D. committees. Source: Duke Research Blog

While broad scientific mapping is important, personal research mapping is becoming more valuable as a career and research tool. There are multiple ways to look at personal influence maps. Using services such as Twitter, Altmetrics, Mention, or Bluenod, and utilizing the h-index calculation allows you to evaluate your own impact. Understanding where your research is being shared, viewed, and discussed enables you to plan to market and distribute your publications in a manner that will amplify citations.

Publications and Global Impact

Publishing has been the premier form of gaining renown in research within the general scientific community for almost four centuries. The historical impact of publication is equilateral, no matter the field of study, and researchers from the humanities to the life sciences have depended on journal publications, white papers, and other traditional methods to provide the stepping stones to visibility.

These traditional metrics have changed with the advent of the internet and social media. Platforms like Linkedin and ResearchGate allow a scientist to gain reputation and renown prior to publication. However, it remains to be seen if the increased visibility results in the same perception of legitimacy granted to traditionally published scientists.

Published papers can contribute to a variety of map types. For example, maps using publication data may be organized by fields of research or citations. These scientific maps are typically limited to well-defined disciplines and scientific journals. They can be drawn in a variety of ways, from utilitarian network diagrams to maps that mimic physical cartography; but the data sets are broad and lack a significant amount of nuance. These methods can show a wide scope of correlation between fields and display the global exchange of data but fall short in exhibiting the influence of a single scientific publication or scientist.

Methods for Measuring Personal Impact

Scientific maps are useful tools to measure your own field of research in relation to others, but they are rarely utilized to map the impact of a single research paper. Peer-to-peer impacts and reactions cannot be gauged utilizing a scientific map; other tools are necessary to delve into a more detailed analysis of influence.

The h-Index

The _h-_index measures the citation impact of a paper. It is based on the number of times a scientist’s paper is cited in other scientific papers and can be used to measure the impact research has had in the peer-to-peer network. The _h-_index does not crawl the web to pull in mentions, social media or forum discussion or the link.

The _h-_index is useful in gauging influence within the scientific community but has received criticism due to potentially misleading results. For example, the index does not differentiate between a good citation and a bad citation. If a paper is cited as an example of poor science, the index will grow even through the impact of the citation is negative. The formula also counts self-citation, which can inflate index numbers without expanding impact.

Altmetric

Altimetric is a service that collects and arranges data for individual research publications across different websites and platforms. Altimetric’s tool provides a dashboard for the scientist to evaluate their individual map. Altimetric takes social media shares, newspaper articles, blog articles, mentions, and more and incorporates these data points into their output. Altimetric pulls from resources both within the scientific community and from laymen.

Altimetric’s methodology enables the scientist to get a global vision of their paper’s impact on the internet, but it does have some limitations. The scoring model is based on popularity and attention and not the quality of the research or publication. A well-researched paper in a field of little public interest may be ranked lower than a poorly done publication on a hot-button topic. For example, a paper “proving” the link between vaccines and autism may generate a high score due to rampant sharing, discussion, and dissemination, but the paper may not be up to scientific standards in its associated field and may not actually “prove” anything.

#### Bluenod

Bluenod is a service that allows a scientist to create a map based on hashtags, keywords, and/or accounts on Twitter. The service then allows visualization of the links between accounts tweeting the keywords that are used to create the map. As an example, using the keyword/hashtag “Genetics” you can create a map that shows all users that tweeted using this hashtag and their relations to one another. The platform allows the user to have a complete overview of Twitter users interested in their field of research or specialization.

While Bluenod does measure the buzz surrounding your specific keywords and hashtags, it does not measure the impact of a single report or publication. Rather, it shows the networking structure and links between people who are interested in or talk about your set keywords. If you publish a paper, it will not appear on the map as the item being discussed, the map will show the specific types of people who are talking about your keywords.

Mention

Mention is a service that provides real-time monitoring of media, newspapers, social networks, forums, blogs, and web-pages. The service measures impact based on keywords and provides a detailed overview of exactly who Tweets, blogs, mentions, and references your specific keywords. Mention then generates an influencer list for your specific keywords to enable you to see who to target when communicating your research.

Mention allows the scientist to target their marketing efforts and keep a tab on the public reception of their research topics; however, there are limitations if a keyword for the research is broadly used. General keywords such as “artificial intelligence” or “AI” may not return results that are specific to the field of study. They may include influencers interested in television shows or book genres and not actual research on the topic. As a result, Mention requires you to use the most specific keywords possible to generate a positive return on utilizing the service. Additionally, mention offers only quantitative data by reporting the frequency of keyword discussion; qualitative results are not provided.

The science mapping of the 21st Century

Today, it is important to understand how your research field connects and interacts with others in addition to understanding how your personal research and influence impact. The importance of influence has given rise to these tools to enable us to measure more specific metrics in relation to research impact.

Social networks and the internet have opened a door to collecting new data metrics for research papers. The metrics can be used not only to measure impact but to also market and disseminate research to reach a higher number of readers than previously possible.

Marketing is becoming more important in scientific research. Understanding how your research and information disseminates into both the scientific community and into the public realm is important for gauging impact, influence, and response to your findings. The increased importance in targeted marketing renders services like Altimetric, Mention, or Bluenod highly useful for any researcher.