Kardashian Index

The Kardashian Index (K-Index), named after Kim Kardashian, is a measure of the discrepancy between a scientist's social media profile and publication record.[1] Proposed 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

The relationship between the number of Twitter followers ( $F$ ) and the number of citations ( $C$ ) is described as:

F=43.3C^{0.32}

The Kardashian Index is thus calculated as:

{\text{K-index}}={\frac {F(a)}{F(c)}}

where $F(a)$ is the actual number of Twitter followers of researcher $X$ and $F(c)$ is the number that researcher should have given their citations.

Interpretation

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'.

Criticism

The K-index suggests that the number of citations of a given scientist is comparable to his or her scientific value. This assumption has been criticized.[2][3]

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.[4]

References

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.
"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.

Bibliography

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.

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[1] 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.

[2] "Introducing the "K Index"".

[3] "Citations are not a measure of quality". Archived from the original on 2014-08-19.

[4] 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.