petersuber

Kudos to the #Netherlands.
https://www.uu.nl/en/news/82-of-scientific-publications-open-access-available

"Dutch universities published 82% of their peer-reviewed scientific publications #OpenAccess in 2021. This is an increase of nine percentage points compared to 2020."

Nov 7, 2022 at 2:02pmWeb
Show threadpetersuberNov 7, 2022

Little experiment comparing activity on #Mastodon and #Twitter.

One hour ago, I posted the Dutch news above (previous item in this thread) at the same time to my personal accounts on #Mastodon and #Twitter. Here's what happened in that hour:

* Mastodon, 24 favorites, 12 boosts

* Twitter, 12 likes, 6 retweets

That's nearly twice as much engagement on Mastodon. But I have more than 23 times more followers on Twitter than Mastodon.

Show threadpetersuberNov 7, 2022

Thanks for all the comments on this little experiment (meta observation: more in #Mastodon than #Twitter). I've seen many good points on how we might explain and interpret the result. For a better understanding of #Mastodon v. #Twitter engagement, we'll clearly need a more systematic experiment.

I won't do that systematic experiment. But if anyone else is interested, here are some recommendations....

Show threadpetersuberNov 7, 2022

* Try the experiment with posts on different topics.
* Try it at different times of day.
* Try it with posts from from people with more/fewer followers than I have.
* Try it in posts with and without a link.

I believe we're all pretty much in the dark on the Twitter algorithm that promotes and demotes posts. But insofar as you have good guesses, or want to test certain guesses, then try this experiment with posts that have/lack some of those magic ingredients.

Show threadApostolos K.Nov 7, 2022
@petersuber I wonder how many followers on 🐥 are no longer there. I just went through and unfollowed around 300 accounts that had been silent since January 2022 (some people I know have passed away sadly). Compared to here where most social media migrants are relatively new and eager to engage. 🤔
Show threadJonobieNov 7, 2022
@petersuber I keep wondering about those who are afraid of losing follow counters if they’re realizing that engagement (at least right now) is higher over here.
Show threadCentauriusNov 7, 2022
@petersuber Could this increase in engagement be due to a “closer” form of interaction fostered by the design and implementation of Mastodon? It seems like Twitter became a standoffish place where everyone is just there for the lurking or performative arts. People seem more willing to actually engage here.
Show threadMó PasaránNov 7, 2022
@Centaurius @petersuber
It's frustrating to engage on Twitter if you haven't got a large follower count. The algorithm doesn't show your content to people, so eventually many give up engaging.
Show threadR SaravananNov 7, 2022
@MoPasaran @Centaurius @petersuber I have faced the same issue on Twitter (about content not being shown). As the number of users grows, even Mastodon users will likely need a curated feed, but since it's open source, you can control the curation algorithm. I'm hoping we can evolve Mastodon to address this problem in a better way.
Show threadMó PasaránNov 7, 2022

@RSarava @Centaurius @petersuber
I hope so, but it's a fair point that engagement being forthcoming for small accounts, may only hold while numbers are small.

Once folks are self-curating, as post volume becomes too large, it may well go back to being everybody just trying to interact with the same small number of accounts, who get too many replies to even read them all.

That's my bubble burst, I guess 😅

Show threadR SaravananNov 7, 2022
@MoPasaran @Centaurius @petersuber I have been thinking of ways to do that, and am planning to create a customized version of mastodon for my own use (and make it freely available). For example, I could toot my periodic blog posts with a #TOTW (toot of the week) hashtag and the algorithm would always show it to followers (even if it hid my other, more frequent toots)
Show threadMó PasaránNov 7, 2022

@RSarava @Centaurius @petersuber
I've a suspicion a lot of people will curate simply by muting all the smaller accounts, unfortunately.

What you're doing sounds interesting tho. I'd love to see how that works out.

Show threadCentauriusNov 7, 2022
@RSarava @MoPasaran @petersuber one of the benefits of the mastodon style of social network is your can propose this exact setup and the developers will/can implement it on the platform. @Gargron
Show threadEdwin LyonsNov 7, 2022
@petersuber @Centaurius I’m certainly engaging more here. For two reasons: I feel less self-conscious as it feels more direct and less likely that my fairly trivial replies will be surfaced to my followers by the algorithm, and I’m trying to encourage this to grow as a community.
Show threadJeff HaluskaNov 7, 2022
@Centaurius @petersuber As others say it's cause the Algorithm is suppressing your posts. If you're a celebrity or have a lot of engagement from niche topics, the algorithm effectively treats your posts as useless.
Show threadEric ScharesNov 7, 2022

@petersuber Very interesting. Even alternative explanations like the time zone distribution of followers on each platform probably wouldn't be enough to explain it.

I see 5 boosts and 1 favorite on the Mastodon version of the Dutch news item. I believe your numbers, but yet again the visibility of who shows up comes into play. Hard (impossible?) to independently verify these counts unless I have access to your specific account.

Show threadVincent TunruNov 7, 2022

@eschares @petersuber As long as you trust his instance, you can always get most accurate numbers yourself by viewing the post itself: https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/109302891202850367

(Numbers are still not perfect; people could always repeat the message elsewhere without notifying the original instance. But the same is true on Twitter — copy-paste is still a thing 🙂)

Show threadJared 🇦🇺🏳️‍🌈⚧️👽Nov 7, 2022
@petersuber try it with content that's not a link to news, that usually goes down better here too.
Show threadJohn Mark OckerbloomNov 7, 2022
@petersuber For me, it varies a lot, but I'm getting noticeable response here. In my public domain series, I think I saw more response here on my post on Willa Cather (not a huge amount, but more than I saw on Twitter). But so far I'm seeing more response (albeit mostly likes & RTs rather than replies) on Twitter than on here for yesterday's post on Sherlock Holmes.
Show threadSlightlyCyberpunkNov 7, 2022
@petersuber The one problem I see with such a comparison is as Mastodon grows I expect the same kind of comparison would show it getting "worse". You have fewer followers here, but each of them probably follows fewer people too so they see your posts more. I used to read every single toot in my feed until maybe two weeks ago, now I could never keep up. Engagement per follower *will* decline as the network grows; and also as accounts inevitably go dormant over time...
Show threadVeterinärtheologeNov 7, 2022
@petersuber I am ok with the assumption, that there are more interactions in the Fediverse (at least for me this is true), but as you have a very new account here and the one on twitter will be (much) older, there is a higher probability here, that the ones following you are still active, then for many of the accounts on twitter. (Does not invalidate your point though, but has to be kept in mind, I think)
Show threadDeyan GinevNov 7, 2022

@petersuber Everyone is likely benefiting from the "honeymoon phase" of engagement, where freshly registered users stay more active than usual to discover everything on the platform.

The engagement numbers ought to average down with time...

Show threadtonnerkillerNov 7, 2022
@petersuber But you cannot compare followers to contacts. I did for example unfollow a number of popular accounts in the Fediverse because I got noticed about their posts from their followers and my motifications list isn't that full.
This might also be due to me being on Hubzilla and not Mastodon and notification working differently here....
Show thread🏁⚡Omar Two Tone⚡🏁Nov 7, 2022
@petersuber when I arrived here, I took as a premise that followers (as a number) aren't as substantial as the accurate info shared by real users.
Show threadFenneladon PrivacyasaurusNov 7, 2022
@petersuber I've seen something similar on a variety of topics. I have 10x less followers here, but way more (and better quality!) engagement. It's kind of amazing actually 😂
Show threadJordan Nov 7, 2022
@petersuber I love the way mastodon is, it’s like you’re not stuck in a bubble anymore. People you’ve never talked to can see your posts and interact. Super cool
Show threadVelteropⓐⓊ🪂🇪🇺🇳🇱🇬🇧🇩🇪Nov 8, 2022
@[email protected] g @mike Just f.y.i., the delays I experienced earlier must have been a glitch with the Mastodon server I'm on, as overnight a veritable vomitorium opened up and I received a slew of posts that I hope to have time to look at today and catch up. Hopefully the issue is resolved now. 🙂
Show threadMike Taylor 🦕Nov 8, 2022
@villavelius Hope so!
Show threadIanTheLibrarianNov 8, 2022
@petersuber This doesn't surprise me. Before the implosion of the bird site I went through and systematically unfollowed all my followers - out of 800ish followers about a 1/4 were obviously bots and another big chunk were accounts that were inactive...
Show threadJan EdenNov 7, 2022
@petersuber Sounds great! Meanwhile, Elsevier is still on the fence regarding the German universities' #OpenAccess project (DEAL): https://www.projekt-deal.de/elsevier-news/
Elsevier News – Projekt DEAL

Show threadEelco Mulder Nov 8, 2022

@petersuber @dingemansemark

More Kudo's 👍

#openaccess

Show threadMagnus PalmbladNov 9, 2022
@petersuber the impact of the Dutch commitment to #OpenAccess was also clear in our recent annotation of methods in Analytical Chemistry (Open Access) papers: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.analchem.2c03565
Show threadJournal of Political EcologyNov 9, 2022
@petersuber Unfortunately that is in part because they have some expensive OA deals with many commercial publishers. https://www.openaccess.nl/en/in-the-netherlands/publisher-deals Our alternative thinking, introducing social justice into where you publish https://doi.org/10.21428/6ffd8432.5e24d46d
Publisher deals

Overview of journals with discountAll publisher deals listedContact persons at the universitiesAn overview of agreements between Dutch university libraries and traditional academic publishers with an open access element starting in 2015. For each publisher the number of open access publications is added.On a regular base Dutch scientists opt for publishers which business model

Show threadpetersuberNov 9, 2022
@journalofpoliticalecology I share objections to #APCs and #transformative agreements you cite here. See the #BOAI20 recommendations 3 and 4, which I helped write.
https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai20/
BOAI20 – Budapest Open Access Initiative