The impact of video abstract on citation counts: evidence from a retrospective cohort study of New Journal of Physics

Annamma L, Subaveerapandiyan A, George BT, Kataria S. Visualising Medical Research: Exploring the Influence of Infographics on Professional Dissemination

Objective

This study explores the impact of infographics on the professional dissemination of medical research. Recognising the burgeoning volume of data in the medical domain, this research aims to bridge the gap by investigating the efficacy of infographics in rendering complex medical concepts understandable to diverse audiences, including policymakers, patients, and the public.

Design

The study uses a cross-sectional survey to assess medical professionals' familiarity with infographic design and data visualisation principles. Setting. The research targets medical professionals with published articles across various subfields, including Clinical Medicine, Epidemiology, Pharmacology, Healthcare Management, Medical Imaging, and Public Health.

Method

Data collection involves an online survey distributed to potential participants through professional networks and research institutions. The survey encompasses Likert-scale questions and demographic variables. Ethical considerations include obtaining approval from the institutional review board, ensuring participant consent, and maintaining data anonymity and confidentiality.

Results

Demographic analysis reveals a diverse participant profile, with 58.7% male and 41.3% female respondents, spanning various age groups, professional experiences, and geographic locations. Assessing familiarity with infographic design and data visualisation principles demonstrates respondents' proficiency in certain areas while highlighting potential areas for improvement.

Conclusion

The study underscores the multifaceted benefits of infographics in research dissemination, as medical professionals perceive. Infographics can effectively convey various kinds of medical research information across diverse platforms and channels.

Why and how to publish aphasia-friendly research summaries

BACKGROUND

A common complaint of people with aphasia and their families is their inability to find information about current aphasia treatment research (Hinckley, Boyle, Lombard & Bartels-Tobin, 2014; Hinckley & El-Khouri, 2021). Plain language summaries, video summaries, and graphical summaries are three ways to disseminate research results that are more accessible to a broader audience. The purpose of this tutorial is to discuss the motivations for disseminating research in understandable ways, and to provide information and resources on how aphasia-friendly dissemination can be done.

METHOD

We report an overview of evidence on the importance of and characteristics of dissemination. Next, we provide specific characteristics and resources for producing plain language summaries, video summaries, and graphical abstracts. Finally, we conducted a systematic search for journals in the area of stroke rehabilitation after consultation with a research librarian. The publication webpages of each journal were inspected to gather information about whether and how the journal published plain language summaries, video summaries, or graphical abstracts. Editors were contacted as needed to complete the information. Sixty journals in stroke rehabilitation were identified, and a total of 43 journals (71%) publish video abstracts, graphical summaries, and/or plain language summaries either independently or through third-party platforms.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings are discussed in the context of the importance of making research consumer-friendly. We offer specific recommendations for aphasia researchers, and future directions for publishing research in ways that will have an impact on the broader public are suggested.

Video abstracts are associated with an increase in research reports citations, views and social attention: a cross-sectional study

Video abstracts have been proposed as a tool to disseminate research through to social networks. However, its association with metrics of research dissemination has not been adequately investigated, particularly in the field of medical research. The aim of this study was to assess the association between video abstracts and citations, views and Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) of research papers. A cross-sectional study of research reports published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) over a 3-year period was conducted. An inverse binomial regression was used to assess factors associated with citations, views and AAS. The model included the presence of video abstracts as well as other independent covariables as potential confounding factors. 500 research reports were included in the analysis and 152 benefited from a video abstract. The median time from publication was 3.0 (2.2 to 3.6) years and 72% were RCTs. Research reports published with a video abstract were associated with an increase in citations (IRR 1.15), although this estimate came with uncertainty ranging from virtually no effect to a worthwhile effect (95% CI 0.98 to 1.35). There were also associated with a worthwhile increase in views (IRR 1.35, 95% CI 1.18 to 1.54) as well as with an increase in AAS (IRR 1.25, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.44). To conclude, video abstracts are associated with a worthwhile increase in the number of views of research reports. They are also associated with an increase in citations and social attention, although the association may be small.

Starstruck by journal prestige and citation counts? On students’ bias and perceptions of trustworthiness according to clues in publication references

Research is becoming increasingly accessible to the public via open access publications, researchers’ social media postings, outreach activities, and popular disseminations. A healthy research discourse is typified by debates, disagreements, and diverging views. Consequently, readers may rely on the information available, such as publication reference attributes and bibliometric markers, to resolve conflicts. Yet, critical voices have warned about the uncritical and one-sided use of such information to assess research. In this study we wanted to get insight into how individuals without research training place trust in research based on clues present in publication references. A questionnaire was designed to probe respondents’ perceptions of six publication attributes. A total of 148 students responded to the questionnaire of which 118 were undergraduate students (with limited experience and knowledge of research) and 27 were graduate students (with some knowledge and experience of research). The results showed that the respondents were mostly influenced by the number of citations and the recency of publication, while author names, publication type, and publication origin were less influential. There were few differences between undergraduate and graduate students, with the exception that undergraduate students more strongly favoured publications with multiple authors over publications with single authors. We discuss possible implications for teachers that incorporate research articles in their curriculum.

Testing how different narrative perspectives achieve communication objectives and goals in online natural science videos

Communication of science through online media has become a primary means of disseminating and connecting science with a public audience. However, online media can come in many forms and stories of scientific discovery can be told by many individuals. We tested whether the relationship of a spokesperson to the science story being told (i.e., the narrative perspective) influences how people react and respond to online science media. We created five video stimuli that fell into three treatments: a scientist presenting their own research (male or female), a third-party summarizing research (male or female), and an infographic-like video with no on-screen presenter. Each of these videos presented the same fabricated science story about the discovery of a new ant species (Formicidae). We used Qualtrics to administer and obtain survey responses from 515 participants (~100 per video). Participants were randomly assigned to one of the videos and after viewing the stimulus answered questions assessing their perceptions of the video (trustworthiness and enjoyment), the spokesperson (trustworthiness and competence), scientists in general (competence and warmth), and attitudes towards the research topic and funding. Participants were also asked to recall what they had seen and heard. We determined that when participants watched a video in which a scientist presented their own research, participants perceived the spokesperson as having more expertise than a third-party presenter, and as more trustworthy and having more expertise than the no-spokesperson stimuli. Viewing a scientist presenting their own work also humanized the research, with participants more often including a person in their answer to the recall question. Overall, manipulating the narrative perspective of the source of a single online video communication effort is effective at impacting immediate objective outcomes related to spokesperson perceptions, but whether those objectives can positively influence long-term goals requires more investigation.

Visual abstracts do not increase some impact scores more than conventional abstracts of clinical research: A retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

We examined whether the use of visual abstracts on social media platforms can improve comprehensive social media and conventional metrics such as total altmetric attention score, full text page views and citation counts (study outcomes) through retrospective cohort study.

METHODS

We included all original research articles (Total 307 articles: N = 69 in visual abstract group and N = 238 in control group) published between July 2018 and January 2019 in the JAMA, BMJ and the NEJM and used negative binomial regression to adjust for article characteristics.

RESULTS

Adjusted analysis showed no significant differences between articles with and without visual abstracts in the altmetric attention score (p = 0.37) and in number of page views (p = 0.44). Citations in the Web of Science core collection were found to be statistically significant favouring control group (p = 0.028). We also found no significant differences in altmetric attention score and page views after stratification for article type [randomised controlled trial (RCT) vs. non-RCT]. Citations counts were found to be borderline significant for RCT (p = 0.04) and non-significant for non-RCT.

CONCLUSION

Visual abstracts might not be effective in disseminating scientific research. We should look at other innovative ways to improve the visibility of the research.

The Potential Value of Video Abstracts to Dissemination of (Some) Information From National Association of Medical Examiners Annual General Meetings

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to determine whether video abstracts posted online to a social media platform (Twitter) increased dissemination of poster-abstract content from National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME) annual general meeting. At NAME meetings (2018, 2019), 20 authors accepted invitations to record visual abstracts. These were subsequently tweeted with their permission. Results were analyzed to determine how many times the video in each tweet was viewed and the number of impressions generated by the tweet. The NAME provided the number of attendees from each meeting to compare with online exposure to tweets.Video views per tweet ranged from 34 to 824 with a mean of 338. Of the 20 tweets, 5 (25%) had 600 or more views. The number of impressions per tweet ranged from 192 to 4629, with a mean of 1811. Seventy percent (14) had 500 or more impressions. Average conference participation for the meetings was 501.Given the numbers of views and even higher number of impressions, there appears to be a substantial increase in dissemination of poster abstracts beyond the conference attendees. The NAME should encourage authors of accepted abstracts to submit video summaries of their work. This will advertise forensic pathology research to a wider audience.

Video or perish? An analysis of video abstract author guidelines

This article reports on an analysis of author guidelines to examine the influence of academic publishers and journals over the video abstract as an emerging genre. The data consist of author guidelines from a Spanish journal index and were analyzed based on a two-layered multimodal analysis adapted from the Genre and Multimodality model. The layout layer concerns the organizational features of author guidelines, while the thematic layer focuses on the content themes. The analysis shows that the selected author guidelines do not share many commonalities as expected; rather, they display miscellaneous features, even in technological specifications where standardization should be the norm. The analysis indicates that academic publishers and other stakeholders should shoulder greater responsibilities such as quality assurance in transitioning to multimodal spaces.