To tweet or not to tweet: three-year experiment finds no citation bump from Twitter promotion

In a controlled experiment spanning three years and involving 11 scientists from a range of life science disciplines, a new study published in PLOS ONE demonstrates that sharing a paper on Twitter did not increase citations.

It has long been asserted that papers shared on social media platforms, such as X (formerly called Twitter), receive a higher number of citations. However, a team of leading science communicators, led by University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences Professor Trevor Branch, with a combined total of 223,000 followers at the end of the experiment, wanted to explore whether increased citations was actually caused by tweeting about them, or was a correlation due to other factors such as the quality of the paper and the importance of the information in the paper. In other words, some papers may simply be unusually good or important, resulting in both more shares on social media and more citations. 

Lead author Branch said “A group of us (on Twitter, of course) agreed that a controlled experiment was needed to test this idea, and we had a ton of fun doing the experiment and writing up the paper. But it definitely tested our patience waiting for the results.”

An example of a tweet sent out about a paper by Dr. Dani Rabaiotti, one of the scientists involved in the experiment.

The team conducted their experiment every month over more than a year starting in December 2018: randomly selecting five articles published in the same month and journal and tweeting about only one while retaining the others as controls, then waiting three more years for citations to accumulate. By recording information such as number of tweets, Altmetric scores (a measure of online attention from social media and news articles), and citation counts, the results demonstrate that although downloads and online attention both increased substantially for the tweeted articles, there was no detectable difference in the number of citations after three years. The authors note that there can be a long lag before additional citations manifest, perhaps longer than the three year study.

Number of downloads of the tweeted papers (blue) and untweeted control papers (red) showing how downloads increased substantially in the days immediately after tweeting.

Social media remains an important way to bridge the gap between scientific research and educating the public. It allows scientists across the globe to not only share their work with other scientists working in their areas of expertise, but also to reach a diverse audience from the non-scientific community. From the public to policy-makers, communicating about science in an engaging, understandable way is useful to demonstrate the importance of conducting research across a number of topics that have global impact and interest. However, as the team found out, doing so does not bump up citation counts, and this should be considered when thinking about the role of science communication. Is the goal to share work to broadly educate or to increase the profile of scientific papers?

“It’s important for scientists and technical experts to break out of the ivory tower and engage with the public, and social media tools are a powerful way to do that. Public science engagement results in a lot of good things for science and for society,” David Shiffman, research associate at Arizona State University shared. “However, tweeting about your published papers does not result in more citations for those papers, despite many people claiming otherwise. It turns out that the relationship between citations and social media shares is not causative – some papers are shared more on social media and cited more for other reasons, which a colleague calls the “good papers are good” hypothesis. If you want to talk about your research using social media, there are lots of reasons why I think you should do that, but don’t think it’ll get you more citations for your research.”

The scientists and science communicators involved in the study spanned three continents from the following institutions: 


Being an ecological detective: modeling population dynamics for humpback whales

Since 2017, Kristin Privitera-Johnson has been working with André Punt on creating a population model for North Pacific humpback whales as part of the work of the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission. This population is modeled using various datasets – new, old, hidden, lost. Working with other members on their team, they’re uncovering new ways to deliver deeper insights into this population of humpbacks, including use of genetic and photo IDs data on population connectivity.

With a migratory lifestyle, North Pacific humpbacks breed in the warmer waters of Asia, Hawaii, Southern California, and Mexico, with data even showing movement even further down into Central America. When they feed, they move northwards, everywhere between Russia, Alaska and the Aleutian Islands to Oregon and California. In Kristin’s words, they are loyal to where they feed and breed, and return to the same places year after year.

IWC-POWER
Humpback whales are migratory, breeding in warmer waters and moving northward as they feed.

Now a PhD student in the Punt Lab at the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS), part of Kristin’s work is to build models to test biologically driven hypotheses posed by her collaborators, related to the population structure of this species. Kristin describes this as being an ecological detective – how do we model who is where, and where do they keep coming back to? And do we have enough data to test the hypotheses? Part of the artfulness of this work is, if we assume some of these hypotheses about breeding and feeding habits, how can mathematical and statistical models be built to reflect this?

The data available to Kristin and her collaborators come from all over the North Pacific and various sources: old whaling records, bycatch, abundance surveys, photo ID mark-recapture, genetic analyses, and even tagging studies. The data is collected by academic scientists who conduct tagging and genetic studies, and organizations such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This massive effort from a variety of groups giving time and data feeds into the development of models of the North Pacific humpback whales.

André and Kristin presenting model results to the working group to further refine how the model represents the biological hypotheses for North Pacific humpback whale breeding stocks and feeding grounds.

Building on classes at SAFS where she had to build fairly complex models using software, Kristin enjoys being able to continue using her quantitative skillsets, while also learning how the production of scientific advice works on a global scale, outside of the US. The projects she works on also demonstrate how researchers can come together from across the world to gather data, produce scientific advice, and how this is then used for real-world applications such as supporting the provision of management advice.

Describing her experience being advised by André as an apprenticeship, she gets to be a part of community-based, team-based work that pairs marine biology and fisheries science with quantitative ecology tools, weaving this all together to provide scientific advice for decision-makers.

There are many factors that potentially impact the North Pacific humpback population, from ship strikes and entanglements, to climate change and sea ice regression opening new travel pathways. During a March 2024 workshop in Seattle, Washington led by Debra Palka form NOAA Fisheries, the biological hypotheses to be tested were finalized, data sources were assembled, and André and Kristin refined earlier models for the North Pacific humpback whales. André and his collaborators will present and refine the model results during the meeting of the International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee in Bled, Slovenia, in April-May 2024.

IWC-POWER
When it’s time to breed and feed, humpback whales return to the same places year after year.

Science diplomacy at work: tackling illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing

In her role as a US Science Envoy, SAFS Assistant Professor Jessica Gephart was selected as one of seven distinguished scientists in January 2023, with this position extended through 2024. Through this role, Jessica is part of a team which helps inform various US institutions and the scientific community about opportunities for science and technology cooperation abroad.

Jessica Gephart outside the Women’s Leadership Empowerment and Networking Forum in Banjul, Gambia.

“Science diplomacy creates an opportunity for knowledge exchange across borders and allows the US to model scientific independence,” Jessica shared. “Although I travel with members of the US State Department, I attend these meetings as a private citizen and my opinions are my own. It’s a great opportunity to learn from the local embassy staff and in-country groups working on aligned issues and hear other perspectives of the issues experienced on the ground”.

Chosen for her expertise in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and trade and how this intersects with international supply chains, Jessica recently traveled to the West African countries of Senegal and Gambia in January 2024 with a more local focus in mind: the processing of small pelagic fish into fishmeal.

Jessica Gephart speaking on a panel at the Women’s Leadership Empowerment and Networking Forum in Banjul, with Sona Jobarteh (Director, Gambia Academy), Amie Joof (Executive Director, Intra Africa Network for Women, Gender, and Development), and Fatou Baldeh (Executive Director, Women in Liberation).

Why is this such a major issue? Sardinella, the primary species going into fishmeal in the region, is an important local food source and has reportedly doubled in price and become scarce. With fishmeal primarily used for aquaculture, estimated at 86%, this fishery issue is having a big impact not only on consumption, but on local fish processors and traders, who are also often women. Currently working on a paper looking into this exact issue, Jessica is delving into who benefits nutritionally from aquaculture production systems.

Senegalese fishing boats, pirogues, at a landing site outside of Dakar.

During her visit to Dakar, Senegal and Banjul, Gambia, Jessica was able to meet with a wide range of local people including students, conservation groups, fisher organizations, women processors, and fisheries managers. “There is a lot of enthusiasm on the ground to tackle issues of overfishing and associated impacts on availability, prices, and supply chain distribution,” Jessica shared. “When it comes to combating these issues is not a lack of willing people with the know-how, but instead resource constraints”. Issues such as limited capacity to patrol waters, inadequate systems for reporting fishing interactions, and a lack of vessels and equipment for monitoring are some key areas of constraint.

Jessica Gephart speaking with Women in STEM student group at the American Center in Banjul, Gambia.

The need for regional coordination to organize priorities around fishery management, such as the nutritional use of small pelagic fish, is something Jessica noted would be useful during her trip. Regional coordination would also have positive impacts on negotiating foreign fishing access, support for training of local people, and introducing regional stock assessments. “Fish don’t recognize our political boundaries, necessitating regional cooperation for their sustainable management, which will only become more urgent as fish stocks shift under climate change,” Jessica said.

This was Jessica’s first trip in her role as a US Science Envoy, with her next trip taking her to Greece in April 2024 for the Our Ocean conference.

Meeting with women fish processors at the Artisanal Fisheries Local Council (CLPA) in Yoff to discuss the challenges facing their business.

New paper: Shellfish aquaculture farms as foraging habitat for nearshore fishes and crabs

As interest and investment in shellfish aquaculture have expanded both locally and globally, so has interest in how these farms modify intertidal habitat and whether the complex structure created by the shellfish and shellfish growing gear provides ecosystem services that are comparable to those of unfarmed areas, such as mudflats and eelgrass meadows.


Microplastics in the marine environment: research in Tetiaroa

Transitioning from a SAFS research scientist to a graduate student in Fall 2023, Kat Lasdin is familiar with the world of microplastics research. As a member of Jacqueline Padilla-Gamiño’s lab, one of the projects Kat has been involved in focuses on water, sand, and microplastics in Tetiaroa, an atoll in French Polynesia. Tetiaroa is also the site of a breadth of other UW-led work, including seabirds and shark research.

Kat Lasdin
Kat Lasdin while on a research trip to Tetiaroa.

Visiting Tetiaroa in October 2022, Kat took samples of dry sand, wet sand, and water, looking for the prevalence and abundance of plastics in this remote region of the world. Located 30 miles north of Tahiti, the 4.5 miles of the Tetiaroa atoll is enclosed by a reef with nearly no opening. “This makes it a unique place to conduct microplastics research and ask questions such as what type of plastics are found here, where in the atoll are they, and is there a geographical difference in the prevalence of plastics that we find,” Kat shared. 

What’s the difference between plastics and microplastics? Microplastics are classed as anything under 5mm in length, and for her research project, Kat is looking at plastics 1mm and greater. Due to the slow degradation of plastics, they have a high likelihood of being ingested by, and accumulating, in various organisms. They’re also a big factor in ocean pollution around the world.

Kat Lasdin
Tetiaroa is an atoll in French Polynesia surrounded by reef with nearly no opening, making it a unique place to study microplastics.

“So far in my analysis, I’m finding that one spot in particular on Tetiaroa, the northwestern area on the lagoon side, has a lot more plastics than anywhere else we’ve seen on the atoll,” Kat said. Digging into the possible reasons behind this, Kat questions whether it could be due to oceanographic differences, or areas of high accumulation. “I’ll be looking into this further in the upcoming months and during the next trip, as well as setting up another project to watch how plastic degrades in the environment over several years,” she added.

Kat Lasdin
Kat is looking into what type of plastics are found in Tetiaroa, where in the atoll are they, and is there a geographical difference in the prevalence of plastics found?

Lot of degradation studies have been conducted on plastics around the world, but Kat and the team she works with have a specific focus on the marine environments in tropical areas such as Tetiaroa and Hawaii, where other work in the Padillo-Gamiño lab is conducted. The idea is to bring plastics to these locations, using their base in Washington State as a control, to investigate how the same type of plastic from the same manufacturer degrades in different parts of the world. “We interact with tropical marine environments most frequently in our lab, and every piece of plastic found in the environment is so different. We’re interested in seeing how the same piece of plastic, over the same timeframe, with the same test parameters, degrades in a different way or the same way, depending on the location,” Kat shared.

With another trip planned for the end of 2024, Kat will conduct exposure studies with organisms and plastics as part of her PhD project. 

Click below to enlarge the graphs

 

 


Examining the impact of settler colonialism on Indigenous food systems

Nicole Doran is in the SAFS masters program

Working at the intersection of environmental justice, food sovereignty, and community-based research, Nicole Doran is centering Indigenous perspectives in her work. Nicole’s research for her masters degree, as a member of Mark Scheuerell’s Applied Ecology Lab at SAFS, has involved a deep dive into available literature to examine the impact of settler colonialism on Indigenous food systems.

With this year marking the 50th anniversary of the Boldt Decision, which upheld the rights of members of several Western Washington Indigenous tribes to fish in accordance with terms of treaties signed in the 1850s, discussions around this topic remain deeply relevant.

Nicole’s literature review, comprising her first thesis chapter, delved into historical documents, accounts, academic papers, traditional ecological knowledge, and reports. “I’m presenting a framework for understanding the layers of environmental injustice that permeates cultural food systems such as those maintained by Indigenous communities,” she said.

The conceptual framework for Nicole’s second chapter, showing elements of food security, food sovereignty, and cultural sovereignty that are important to Indigenous food systems, and achieving food justice.

In order to take a deeper look into how Indigenous thoughts about topics such as food sovereignty and access differ from western science, Nicole highlights an example: “When thinking about contaminants and banning fishing, state or federal regulators may decide that any containment above a certain level means fishing should be banned. Indigenous ways of thinking have a different focus on this issue, where either no level of containment is acceptable, or that a particular fish is so important spiritually and traditionally in the community, that it should still be harvested,” she shared.

Digging into the concepts of food sovereignty and food security, and the big impact of environmental justice on Indigenous food systems, Nicole found that there is a key distinction to be made. “A lot of Indigenous communities lack food security, but for ones who have this, it isn’t enough. Food sovereignty is highly important too,” Nicole said. “Is the food they have access to healthy, traditional, and prepared in a self-governed way? Food sovereignty elements are extremely important, but in the eyes of the government for example, who provide food and other commodities – spam, white flour, sugar, oil – this food security is enough.” The topic of limitations on access to traditional and cultural food also brings to the fore issues around the nutritional value and healthiness of commodities provided, which have led to increases in diabetes and heart disease in these communities. In the food literature that Nicole looked into as part of her second chapter on this topic, she found that food security and food sovereignty weren’t considered together, but they should be.

Nicole Doran
The conceptual framework for thinking about how Indigenous food justice lends itself to resilience for the environment, communities, and the cultural relationships Indigenous Peoples maintain with their traditional lands.

Bringing all of this work together in her third chapter, Nicole explored how to build resilience from an ecology perspective. Indigenous communities recognize that our world is always in flux – climate, food, environment, resources – and it’s an important aspect to consider when thinking about food systems. “The principle of being in a relationship with environments in traditional ways, not separated from nature, but rather tightly interwoven through reciprocal relationships, is incredibly important,” Nicole shared, but this has been significantly affected by settler colonialism.

One of the key takeaways Nicole wants to highlight from her research has been the ways in which people should connect with Indigenous ways of thinking and scholarship: “There are a lot of well-meaning people wanting to connect with Indigenous scholars, but the first step is to engage with the land you work on and look more deeply into how science itself has been impacted by settler colonialism”. Another vital learning that Nicole wants to share is the importance of ethical collaboration. “Bringing back the research to the community, sharing the outcomes, speaking openly, and respecting the relationship of trust that has been developed, is so important, and a lesson worth learning for a lot of people working in this space,” she noted.

The map displays the sixteen largest reservoirs created by dams in the United States (blue dots) and Native American reservations (red), and this shows that the spatial distribution of dams is very inequitable, in that they are on or next to tribal lands.

Looking ahead: what does climate change have in store for Pacific Coast fish?

From Alaska to California, researchers are looking into the impact of climate change on the distribution of fish that live near the seafloor. Focusing on species such as halibut, pollock, sablefish and rockfishes, which have commercial and environmental importance for the Pacific Coast of the US, these fish are impacted in different ways by shifting ocean temperature and oxygen, resulting in a myriad of knock-on effects.

Julia L. Indivero headshot
Julia Indivero is a PhD student in Tim Essington’s lab at SAFS.

We spoke with Julia Indivero, a PhD student at SAFS, about what some of these effects could be. Rising temperatures and decreasing oxygen may affect where fish can live, which in turn may change how close they are to boats and ports involved in the fishing industry. “Fishers are used to fish being in a certain area, and if fish move farther away, this may become difficult for fishery operations. Different species responses to ocean conditions may also change the overlap in habitat between species and impact possible bycatch issues,” Julia shared.

Julia’s research is combining data to look at the Pacific Coast in its entirety, versus being separated out by region as is usually done in work on this topic. By combining predictions for multiple regions, researchers can build models which include more sensitivities and reflect broader-scale change in fish distribution.

Conducting her work in Tim Essington’s Marine Conservation and Ecology Group, Julia’s quantitative research involves developing models to predict where fish may be located under future climate change scenarios. By combining data on ocean conditions and on fish abundance from thousands of locations each year from the 1990s through 2023, these models estimate how fish abundances are impacted by temperature and oxygen. Then, these relationships are used to predict fish abundances at these locations if temperature and oxygen change, following what global forecasts of human-caused carbon emissions expect.

Countries and fishery management bodies around the globe are interested in understanding how fish distributions might shift in future climates.

“The possible implications for transboundary governance is especially interesting. Quotas, catch limits, treaties, and protected areas, are all based on geographic locations, but fish ignore these boundaries when big climate change shifts happen,” Julia said.  

This makes the ability to predict future fish distributions even more important, so that individuals, regions, and countries, can better anticipate these changes and put in place the required modifications to management structures and boundaries now.

There is an inherent level of uncertainty when making forecasts based on climate change shifts in ocean temperature and oxygen. The models that Julia works on recognize these uncertainties: “There’s uncertainty in the level of carbon emissions that will happen, there’s uncertainty in the exact temperature and oxygen change in the ocean, there’s uncertainty in how fish will respond to a changing environment. But predictions can provide us with plausible scenarios and a range of possible future situations.” One area that needs some work, Julia mentions, is understanding how relationships between fish and ocean conditions that are based on data from the past, may hold up or break down in a warmer world: “We’re developing methods to try to better predict how fish might respond to temperature and oxygen levels that are completely beyond what they’ve experienced before.”

What would pre-emptive action to deal with future changes in fishery distribution look like for those on the ground?

“Fishers could look at these predictions and start investing in different types of vessels and gear needed to catch new fish in their fishing areas,” Julia said. “Being able to share scientific information that informs diversification efforts would be a great benefit,” she added.  

On a large scale, ports and cities can start investing in infrastructure that has the ability to process different fish products based on future predictions. Managers can begin developing flexible policies that allow individual vessels and fishers to switch permits between species. It also reaches the highest level of those involved in fisheries management. “At an international level, future predictions of fish distribution mean they can start thinking about how to deal with, and adapt, to species moving in and out of national boundaries,” Julia shared.

Now in her fourth year at SAFS and just getting started on this research, Julia will be focusing on this topic for the remainder of her PhD.


Will the tides change on tidal energy in the US? Quantifying fish encounters with tidal turbines

Diving into the world of marine renewable energy, Jezella Peraza, a masters student at SAFS, has recently published a paper looking into the probabilities of fish-turbine encounters and impact.

Jezella Peraza, SAFS masters student

Whereas the renewable energy sector utilizing solar and wind energy is booming in the United States, the uptake of tidal energy is off to a slower start. Tidal turbines, placed on the sea floor, generate energy when water moves through a constricted area.

“We want to understand the environmental impacts tidal energy might have on marine ecosystems and organisms before utilizing this energy source. The US won’t allow the permitting and consenting process to occur before having data on potential encounters and interactions between tidal turbines and underwater life,” Jezella shared. This approach is flipped in Europe, who have taken the approach of monitoring impacts on the ecosystem while marine renewable energy projects are underway.

Interactions of seal, crab, and lobster with marine energy devices, including a horizontal axis tidal turbine (lower right) and a point absorber wave energy converter (background left) – from Hemery, L.G.; Copping, A.E.; Overhus, D.M. Biological Consequences of Marine Energy Development on Marine Animals. Energies 2021, 14, 8460.

Using empirical statistical and simulation models, Jezella set out to estimate interactions between fish, specifically Pacific herring, and tidal turbine devices. She also took this a step further to address knowledge gaps when quantifying risks, by also exploring fish behavior before they encounter the turbine directly. In her literature review, she noted fish actively avoid a tidal turbine around 140m away, where they notice something unusual in the distance and then change their trajectory to avoid it. “This so-called zone of influence, which is within 140m of the turbine, is important to explore because it gives us insight into general fish avoidance behavior,” Jezella said.

NOAA Fisheries
Pacific herring, which is the study species.

By analyzing existing literature and models, Jezella investigated what was missing and drafted a comprehensive model with her advisor, John Horne, that contains everything they think is important to include when estimating fish-turbine interaction probabilities. To fit their model, named the Probabilistic Encounter-Impact Model, they used fish density survey data from Admiralty Inlet, Washington, which is a proposed tidal energy project site, plus literature parameter values. This has allowed them to ascertain probabilities for each component of the model:

  • What is the probability of fish being in the zone of influence? This is when fish are 140m away from the turbine.
  • What is the probability of fish encountering the turbine? This would involve being within 10s of meters of the turbine.
  • What is the probability of impact? This involves collision with stationary turbine structures or an interaction with turbine blades.

What did Jezella find out using her model? One of the key insights was that avoidance behavior has a big influence on probabilities of impact, and this is the kind of information that regulators and managers are interested in when considering future permitting of tidal turbines. Specifically, she found that when avoidance was not applied to her model, impact probabilities were two to three orders of magnitude greater than when avoidance is incorporated. Information on avoidance behavior is hard to come by however. “There is limited data on this, so researchers in the past have used controlled experiments in the field or in the lab, where they observe what fish do around tidal devices. And in most cases, fish will avoid it,” Jezella said. “However, this isn’t truly a real-life situation as it’s still an experiment,” she added. Other studies have used cameras to observe fish avoidance and have noted that they go through the blades, or up and over the turbine. But what happens in a scenario where flow speed is really high, and they get sucked in?

Admiralty Inlet study location within Puget Sound, Washington (upper right), mobile survey transect layout (upper left) showing north and south grids, and locations of the autonomous acoustic packages (lower left) that correspond to the area of the SnoPUD proposed turbine location.

The second chapter of Jezella’s thesis project will take her work forward and consist of an agent-based model, where the model acts as a flexible simulation tool that takes into account types of behaviors and environmental factors, such as tidal flow. This would provide a real-time look into fish swimming in the area of the tidal turbine and see what they do: do they take action to avoid the device, or do they interact with it? It is also designed to be applicable for other underwater life such as marine mammals. Another area of flexibility in the model is in the type of tidal turbine investigated. Tidal turbines range from cross-flow and axial flow, and come in a variety of sizes stretching from 5m in width to 30m in width.

Encounter-impact model structure and schematic, from the 2023 paper Quantifying conditional probabilities of fish-turbine encounters and impacts.

When making her decision to apply for a masters program, Jezella wanted to build on the quantitative skills she developed during her Statistics Minor as an undergrad, and also to work on a unique project where she could make an impact. Her thesis project on the probabilities of fish encounters with tidal turbines ticked all the right boxes: “Working on a project related to climate change and possible mitigation is something worthwhile to me. Taking the measures to protect fish and marine mammals if marine renewable energy does take off in the US in the future is really exciting, as it’s currently an untapped resource with a lot of sustainability potential.”

Jezella has presented her research at a number of conferences in the past year, including an oral presentation at the European Wave and Tidal Energy Conference (EWTEC) in Bilbao, Spain, the University Marine Energy Research Community conference in Durham, New Hampshire, and SACNAS in Portland, Oregon.

Read Jezella’s paper published in Frontiers Journal