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The Kardashian Index (K-Index), named after Kim Kardashian, is a satirical measure of the discrepancy between a scientist's social media profile and publication record.[1] Proposed by Neil Hall in 2014, the measure compares the number of followers a research scientist has on Twitter to the number of citations they have for their peer-reviewed work.
Definition[edit]
The relationship between the number of Twitter followers () and the number of citations () is described as:
which is derived from the Twitter accounts and citation counts of a "randomish selection of 40 scientists" in 2014.[1] The Kardashian Index is thus calculated as:
where is the actual number of Twitter followers of researcher and is the number that researcher should have given their citations.
Interpretation[edit]
A high K-index indicates an over-blown scientific fame while a low K-index suggests that a scientist is being undervalued. According to the author, researchers whose K-index > 5 can be considered 'Science Kardashians'.
On February 11, 2022, on Twitter, Neil Hall stated that he intended the Kardashian Index to be a “dig at metrics not Kardashians” and that “the entire premise is satire”.[2]
Criticism[edit]
The K-index suggests that the number of citations of a given scientist is comparable to their scientific value. This assumption has been criticized.[3][4]
On the other hand, the proposal of the K-Index in itself can be interpreted as a criticism to the assumption that scientists should have a social media impact at all while, in reality, social media footprint has no correlation at all to the scientific quality or scientific impact.[5]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ a b Hall, N (July 30, 2014). "The Kardashian index: a measure of discrepant social media profile for scientists" (PDF). Genome Biology. 15 (7): 424. doi:10.1186/s13059-014-0424-0. PMC 4165362. PMID 25315513. Retrieved August 15, 2014.
- ^ Hall, Neil [@neilhall_uk] (11 February 2022). "@GidMK @WvSchaik It's a dig at metrics not Kardashians. It's like taking a quiz to see what character from Game of Thrones you are and finding out you're Joffrey Baratheon. It doesn't matter - it's not a real test. Thankfully" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 14 February 2022. Retrieved 21 February 2022 – via Twitter.
- ^ "Introducing the "K Index"".
- ^ "Citations are not a measure of quality". Archived from the original on 2014-08-19.
- ^ Houstein, Stefanie; Peters, Isabella; Sugimoto, Cassidy R.; Thelwall, Mike; Larivière, Vincent (April 2014). "Tweeting biomedicine: An analysis of tweets and citations in the biomedical literature". Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 65 (4): 656–669. arXiv:1308.1838. doi:10.1002/asi.23101. S2CID 11113356.
Bibliography[edit]
- Francisco, Mikael Angelo (2014-07-31). "The Kardashian Index: A scientific measure of unwarranted fame". GMA Network. Archived from the original on 2014-10-11. Retrieved 2014-10-10.
- Staff writer (2014-08-05). "Scientist proposes Kardashian Index". Yahoo! News. Press Association. Archived from the original on 2014-10-11. Retrieved 2014-10-10.
- Larki, Shadan (2014-08-05). "The 'Kardashian index' measures researchers' social clout". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on 2014-10-11. Retrieved 2014-10-10.
- Woolston, Chris (2014-08-14). "Clash over the Kardashians of science". Nature. 512 (17): 517. Bibcode:2014Natur.512..117W. doi:10.1038/512117e.
- Parr, Chris (2014-08-14). "Kardashian Index: the academics famous just for being famous". Times Higher Education. Archived from the original on 2014-10-11. Retrieved 2014-10-10.
- Steinbauer, Von Anna (2014-09-22). ""Kardashian"-Index in der Wissenschaft". Süddeutsche Zeitung. Archived from the original on 2014-10-11. Retrieved 2014-10-10.