Overall and COVID-19-specific citation impact of highly visible COVID-19 media experts: bibliometric analysis is a research paper published in BMJ Open (2021). On theSindex it has a DataRank of 0.442. It has been cited 18 times. Its calibrated FAIR score is 21/100.
ObjectiveTo evaluate whether the COVID-19 experts who appear most frequently in media have high citation impact for their research overall, and for their COVID-19 peer-reviewed publications in particular and to examine the representation of women among such experts.DesignCross-linking of data sets of most highly visible COVID-19 media experts with citation data on the impact of their published work (career-long publication record and COVID-19-specific work).SettingCable news appearance in prime-time programming or overall media appearances.ParticipantsMost highly visible COVID-19 media experts in the USA, Switzerland, Greece and Denmark.InterventionsNone.Outcome measuresCitation data from Scopus along with discipline-specific ranks of overall career-long and COVID-19-specific impact based on a previously validated composite citation indicator.ResultsWe assessed 76 COVID-19 experts who were highly visible in US prime-time cable news, and 50, 12 and 2 highly visible experts in media in Denmark, Greece and Switzerland, respectively. Of those, 23/76, 10/50, 2/12 and 0/2 were among the top 2% of overall citation impact among scientists in the same discipline worldwide. Moreover, 37/76, 15/50, 7/12 and 2/2 had published anything on COVID-19 that was indexed in Scopus as of 30 August 2021. Only 18/76, 6/50, 2/12 and 0/2 of the highly visible COVID-19 media experts were women. 55 scientists in the USA, 5 in Denmark, 64 in Greece and 56 in Switzerland had a higher citation impact for their COVID-19 work than any of the evaluated highly visible media COVID-19 experts in the respective country; 10/55, 2/5, 22/64 and 14/56 of them were women.ConclusionsDespite notable exceptions, there is a worrisome disconnect between COVID-19 claimed media expertise and scholarship. Highly cited women COVID-19 experts are rarely included among highly visible media experts.
FAIR checklist signals are shown for context only and do not affect DataRank scoring.
Calibrated FAIR score — a parallel quality metric, independent of the DataRank citation score. See the full evaluation →
Base Score Contribution
0.442
From this paper's citation signal
Citation Network Contribution
0
Citation network not refreshed for this result
This paper's DataRank is currently driven only by its base citation score. Citation network data was not refreshed for this result.
Learn more about DataRank methodology →DataRank blends this paper's own citation count with the influence of the papers that cite it. Here, roughly 100% comes from its base citations and 0% from the citation network.
Citers are pulled from OpenAlex sorted by cited_by_count:descand capped per paper, so when the cap binds we keep the highest-signal references and the score is reproducible across reruns.