Do You Cite What You Tweet? Contextualizing the Tweet-Citation Relationship

Investigating the context in which researchers engage with social media objects facilitates a greater understanding of their research behaviour. This study shifts analytical focus from the research paper itself to the geographical, socio-topical, and individual dimensions of the Tweeter and the tweeted paper to understand if researchers cite what they tweet. Results show that Tweeters are more likely to cite papers affiliated with their same institution, papers published in journals in which they also have published, and papers in which they hold authorship. It finds that the older the academic age of a Tweeter the less likely they are to cite what they tweet, though there is a positive relationship between citations and the number of papers they have published and references they have accumulated over time. This paper sheds light on the contextual nature of the tweet-citation relationship.