And they try, and they praise, but they don’t marry: Once again about the connection between downloads, views and citations

Abstract

The question of the possible influence of the number of views / downloads of scientific articles from journal websites, as well as the number of their mentions in social networks on the number of subsequent citations of these publications is considered. In particular, an analysis of some of such correlations is carried out on the example of 39 Russian translated journals of biological orientation distributed by the Springer Nature publishing house. Data from 2019–2021 was used regarding the number of article downloads, impact factors of editions, their SJR, CiteScore, SNIP, and usage factors. An analysis of the results obtained, as well as data available on the Internet, allowed the authors to conclude that the relationship between the number of downloads or altmetrics and the number of citations is not very strong, although it is quite reliable. It is emphasized that at present a large number of downloads / views of articles are carried out by users who are not engaged in science and, accordingly, do not write articles for academic journals. They are simply interested in scientific research results, and the Internet is now available to almost anyone. This also applies to the discussion of scientific publications in social networks. Apparently, the frequent mention of work in such networks really stimulates its downloads – however, this becomes obvious only if the article is an open access one, because the majority of “law-abiding” users of social networks do not have legal access to publications in subscription editions. The mentioned circumstances, according to the authors, will lead to a gradual weakening of the correlations considered in the article.