August 27, 2014
Correspondence: Neil Hall neil.hall@liverpool.ac.uk
Centre for Genomic Research, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZB, UK
Genome Biology 2014, 15:424 doi:10.1186/s13059-014-0424-0
Abstract
In the era of social media there are now many different ways that a scientist can build their public profile; the publication of high-quality scientific papers being just one. While social media is a valuable tool for outreach and the sharing of ideas, there is a danger that this form of communication is gaining too high a value and that we are losing sight of key metrics of scientific value, such as citation indices. To help quantify this, I propose the ‘Kardashian Index’, a measure of discrepancy between a scientist’s social media profile and publication record based on the direct comparison of numbers of citations and Twitter followers.
The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://genomebiology.com/2014/15/7/424
image source: http://oncirculation.com/2013/08/14/social-media-and-science/
