آيا كوويد-19 مسير رابطه­ ي تأثير استنادي و تأثير اجتماعي مقالات پژوهشي را تغيير مي­دهد؟

Does Covid-19 Change the Direction of Citation Impact and Social Impact of Research Articles?

محدوديت‌هاي مالي براي حمايت تحقيقات در بسياري از كشورها از جمله ايران باعث شده است كه نگاه نقادانه به روش هاي سنجش اثر پژوهش ها وجود داشته باشد. امروزه اتكاي صرف بر روي معيارهاي استنادي براي اندازه گيري بهره وري پژوهش براي سازمان ها توجيه پذير نيست. مؤسسات و دانشگاه ها بيشتر به اين توجه دارند كه تا چه اندازه پژوهش هاي آ ن ها توانسته به نيازهاي جامعه جواب دهد و مشكلات موجود را حل كند (1). بنابراين، سازمان‌ها برآنند تا ابزارها و روش هاي كامل تري براي اندازه گيري اثر پژوهش پيدا كنند كه مبتني بر استناد نباشد؛ زيرا در شاخص فراواني تعداد استناد، بهره مندي كل جامعه مانند صاحبان حرف، پزشكان، آموزشگران و عموم مردم از اثر منتشر شده به بهاي استفاده ي جامعه ي محدود «پژوهشگران ديگر» ناديده گرفته مي شود (3،2). به علاوه روش هاي پيشنهادي ديگر مانند تبلور آثار پژوهش در صنعت، ثبت اختراعات ، كيفيت زندگي، اقتصاد و بازار كار نيز به خاطر شكاف زماني بين پژوهش و استفاده با ترديد مواجه شده است.

Financial constraints to support research in many countries, including Iran, have led to a critical look at methods of measuring the effectiveness of research. Today, relying solely on citation impact to measure research productivity is not justified for funding organizations. Institutions pay more attention on understanding of the extent their research has been able to meet the needs of society and solve existing problems (1). Therefore, organizations seek to find more comprehensive tools and methods to measure the impact of research that is not necessarily the frequency of citation. Because the use of the whole society such as professionals, doctors, educators and the general public from the research work is ignored, at the expense of the limited community of "other researchers" as long as citation impact is used for measuring the impact of the research (2,3). In addition, other proposed methods for measuring impact of research on industry, patent, quality of life, economy and trade market is encountered with suspicion due to delay between research conduction and use of research in products, processes and practices (4). Meanwhile, Altmetrics offers a potentially different way to measure the immediate social impact of research. Altmetrics is an index that is constructed by tracking the use of a scientific research work on the social networks. Altmetrics measures the social influence of a research work based on several components of downloading, discussing and sharing on social networks, news and policy documents. By the field based normalizing, Altmetrcs tries to provide a suitable tool for measurement. However, following the dynamic nature of web environment, more functional and diverse platforms are added to Altmetrics sources to be able to measure other aspects of social and scientific impact, online. The Dimensions has been added to the metrics since 2014, as a platform for tracking both academic and social impact. (https://app.dimensions.ai/). The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the direction of information communication. Inevitable social isolation has led to the transfer of the office, the classroom, the business market and the social relations of people around the world to cyberspace. Among these, social networks played the most important role in social and academic communication. Scientific articles are read, shared, reviewed, and used by various groups of researchers, scientists, physicians, and members of public before being cited by other articles in the same type. In this way, the role of alternative metrics is more important in comprehensive measurement of research productivity. Covid-19 pandemic showed that the content of a research article, if it meets the needs of society and meets the problems of society, is spread among the professional and non-professional in social networks regardless of the prestige and reputation of the journal. Studies have shown that there is a relationship between number of mentions to articles in altmetric sources and number of citations, as well as number of viewing and downloading articles on social networks such as ResearchGate and citing the same articles in WoS (3). But it is not yet clear which variable refers to the direction of relationship between citation impact and social impact. Does the high frequency of citations to an article make the article intakes more attention on social media? Or, on the contrary, an article that attracts more attention on the social networks receives more citations, consequently? The COVID-19 pandemic showed that the compliance of research with the information needs of society is more effective than other previously known factors in the construction of the social impact of research obtained from Altmetrics score. Perhaps the common factor that determines the relationship between social and academic impact is the content and subject of research. However, Altmetrics as a comprehensive an immediate indicator for measuring the social impact of research is important and organizations and universities should not ignore it.