Title: Understanding the Twitter Usage of Humanities and Social Sciences Academic Journals,
Abstract: Scholarly communication has the scope to transcend the limitations of the
physical world through social media extended coverage and shortened information
paths. Accordingly, publishers have created profiles for their journals in
Twitter to promote their publications and to initiate discussions with public.
This paper investigates the Twitter presence of humanities and social sciences
(HSS) journal titles obtained from mainstream citation indices, by analysing
the interaction and communication patterns. This study utilizes webometric data
collection, descriptive analysis, and social network analysis. Findings
indicate that the presence of HSS journals in Twitter across disciplines is not
yet substantial. Sharing of general websites appears to be the key activity
performed by HSS journals in Twitter. Among them, web content from news portals
and magazines are highly disseminated. Sharing of research articles and
retweeting was not majorly observed. Inter-journal communication is apparent
within the same citation index, but it is very minimal with journals from the
other index. However, there seems to be an effort to broaden communication
beyond the research community, reaching out to connect with the public.