Table I.
Examples of social media platforms for scholarly activities
| Platforms | Advantages | Limitations |
|---|---|---|
| Twitter https://twitter.com/ |
It is the largest microblogging platform where users generate tweets, retweet, and like postings. The use of hashtags and Twitter handles increases the engagement of the account holders. Photo- and video-sharing services make the platform attractive for education and live streaming of meetings. Editors may moderate their journal accounts for boosting the immediate impact of publications | Limited number of characters in a tweet (280), numerous Twitter bots with indiscriminate automatic posts, limited use in non-Anglophone countries |
| Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ |
Globally popular, actively used for live streaming meetings, and interconnecting with Zoom, YouTube, and other video-sharing sites | Mostly used for personal and friendly communications, low weight in terms of alternative metrics |
| Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ |
This platform is employed for sharing photos, medical images, and videos. Journals that predominantly publish images may benefit from their active presence on this site | No weight for altmetric aggregate score calculation, small number of journals with Instagram accounts |
| YouTube https://www.youtube.com/ |
This is an online video-sharing platform with a variety of services for educators, researchers, and editors and navigation to many other online channels. Online meetings can be live streamed and archived on this site | Reliability and quality of posted videos vary widely. Some videos are promotional, misleading, and damaging for patient health |
| LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/ |
It can be used for professional networking, career development, and job advertisements. Journals may set their accounts on this site to expand their reach to potential staff members | No weight for altmetric aggregate score calculation |
| Mendeley https://www.mendeley.com/ |
Researchers use Mendeley bookmarking and reference management tools for building up personal libraries. This site can aid in evaluating collaborators’ profiles. An analysis of bookmarking activities reveals interested users/scholars | Not included in altmetric aggregate score calculation |
| ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/ |
This site is used for open archiving, networking, evaluating collaborators’ profiles, and discussing scientific issues | The quality of archived materials is not reviewed, and the displayed author-level metric (“RG Score”) is unacceptable for scholarly evaluation |