Scientific birds of a feather flock together:science communication on social media rarely happens across or beyond disciplinary boundaries

The success of academic research in reaching out beyond its own scientific community is a perennial concern, even more so following the rapid adoption of social media and the ability to easily transmit information to potentially millions of people. Consequently, many attempts have been made to capture the broad scientific impact beyond academia using social media data. But is increased social media attention really indicative of “broader impact”? Qing Ke, Yong-Yeol Ahn and Cassidy R. Sugimoto have studied how much scientific discourse is happening across and beyond scientific communities on Twitter and found that social media does not broaden scientific communication, but rather replicates and perpetuates pre-established disciplinary boundaries. “Alt” metrics may not be so alternative after all.