People other than scientists need to know about our science!
Yes, scientific impact (as measured via citations, for example) is important, of course, but most behavior analysts would agree that the science of behavior is somewhat pointless unless it is available to people who are not behavior analysts. In this respect, it has never been sufficient to simply discuss amongst ourselves how behavior analysis might better the world. We need to do what’s necessary to spread the gospel.
Yet there are only so many behavior analysts to do the spreading, and some of us don’t exactly specialize in persuasive verbal behavior, so our science benefits immensely when other people help with the spreading. This is where dissemination impact comes in.
Dissemination impact has been defined as the quantifiable influence that a scholarly work has on discussions by and for non-researchers [though see Postscript 1]. To mention just a few examples, dissemination impact is evident when a journal article is mentioned in news stories, social media, or professional documents created to support patents or policy-making efforts. Such mentions are analogous in function to scholarly citations, but they convey the interest of very different audiences.
We should be monitoring this kind of influence so we can tell where our message is getting though (and where it’s not — see here and here). Toward this end, in previous posts I’ve reported on work appearing in behavior analysis journals that accrued the most altmetric mentions in 2022 (here and here and here) and 2023. Now, to close out 2024, I do so for the past year.
The how-to: A convenient (if imperfect) data base of relevant mentions is that maintained by Altmetric.com [the company is Altmetric, and the data are called altmetrics]. The data base tracks a variety of mention types but it is not comprehensive. For example, for social media it reports mainly mentions in X and facebook. It monitors only some news outlets, blogs, and sources of policy documents. The proper use of altmetric data is to evaluate the relative impact of different publications, within the sources tapped by the data base, which is what I do here.
A few quick procedural notes about the data to be presented:
- I collected data using the Altmetric Explorer app.
- In the past I have summarized dissemination impact using the Altmetric Attention Score, a weighted index of several types of mentions. The Attention Score is handy, but unless you’ve memorized how it’s calculated it can be hard to grasp what it’s communicating. Here, for simplicity, I report raw numbers of mentions of all types combined.
- My past reports focused on the dissemination impact of articles published in the previous year. The present post describes altmetric mentions occurring in the previous year, but of articles published at any time. Note that most types of mentions have a short half-life, so, with a few exceptions, the articles receiving a lot of mentions are fairly recent.
- My data collection window (11/11/23 to 11/10/24) doesn’t exactly map onto the 2024 calendar year. Reason: My license to use the Altmetric Explorer app was about to expire, so I had did what I could when I could. But I’m pretty sure the overall tenor of results would be similar with the window shifted forward by one month.
The envelope, please: Here, without editorial comment, is a snapshot of what in the behavior analysis literature got noticed outside of scholarly circles in the last year.
20 behavior analysis journals, ranked by total altmetric mentions
(# mentions/# mentioned articles)
| 1. J. Applied Behavior Analysis (715/140) | 2. Behavior Analysis in Practice (591/131) | 3. J. Contextual Behavioral Science (427/137) | 4. Behavior Modification (342/53) |
| 5(T). J. Experimental Analysis of Behavior (339/108) | 5(T). Perspectives on Behavior Science (339/81) | 7. Behavioral Interventions (286/60) | 8. J. Positive Behavior Interventions (200/40) |
| 9. J. Behavioral Education (166/44) | 10. Japanese J. Behavior Analysis (149/23) | 11. Behavior & Social Issues (135/28) | 12. Psychological Record (105/66) |
| 13. Analysis of Verbal Behavior (99/20) | 14. J. Organizational Behavior Management (35/14) | 15. Education & Treatment of Children (26/13) | 16. European J. Behavior Analysis (16/9) |
| 17. Mexican J. Behavior Analysis (4/4) | 18(T). Behavior & Philosophy (0/0) | 18(T). Behavior Analysis: Research & Practice (0/0) | 18(T). J. Behaviorology (0/0) |
Top behavior analysis journals
for each of 5 types of altmetric mentions
| SOCIAL MEDIA (X + facebook) | NEWS REPORTS | BLOGS | POLICY & PATENT documents | WIKIPEDIA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 577 J. Applied Behavior Analysis | 72 J. Contextual Behavioral Science | 40 Psychological Record | 20 J. Applied Behavior Analysis | 32 J. Experimental Analysis of Behavior |
| 500 Behavior Analysis in Practice | 67 J. Applied Behavior Analysis | 38 Behavior Analysis in Practice | 7 Behavior Modification | 25 J. Applied Behavior Analysis |
| 309 J. Contextual Behavioral Science | 32 Behavior & Social Issues | 29 J. Behavioral Education | 5 J. Contextual Behavioral Science | 17 Perspectives on Behavior Science |
| 298 Perspectives on Behavior Science | 28 J. Experimental Analysis of Behavior | 28 J. Contextual Behavioral Science | 2 (Several) | 14 Behavior Analysis in Practice |
| 286 Behavior Modification | 17 Behavior Modification | 21 Behavior Modification | 12 Psychological Record |
The 5 most-mentioned articles
in the most-mentioned behavior analysis journals
** = published in 2023 or 2024
Comparison journals
To provide some context, here are altmetric data from the same time frame for several “behavior-analysis-adjacent” journals (see Postscript 2 for a definition).
| JOURNAL | MENTIONS/ ARTICLES | SOCIAL MEDIA | NEWS | BLOGS | POLICY/ PATENT | WIKIPEDIA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Behavior Therapy | 618/176 | 406 | 132 | 5 | 16 | 22 |
| School Psychology Review | 535/115 | 424 | 95 | 4 | 8 | 4 |
| J. Autism & Developmental Disorders | 5046/890 | 3833 | 873 | 69 | 111 | 123 |
| Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders | 1104/210 | 893 | 121 | 47 | 13 | 20 |
| Behavioural Processes | 1078/203 | 435 | 549 | 26 | 7 | 51 |
| Behaviour Research & Therapy | 1807/454 | 996 | 535 | 111 | 49 | 98 |
| Animal Cognition | 2423/301 | 1385 | 890 | 69 | 0 | 67 |
| Applied Animal Behaviour Science | 4191/437 | 1067 | 2930 | 64 | 8 | 99 |
| Sustainability | 10688/4231 | 6300 | 1943 | 210 | 866 | 409 |
| Mindfulness | 925/267 | 317 | 440 | 123 | 15 | 17 |
| Top Behavior Analysis Journal | 715/140 | 577 | 72 | 40 | 20 | 32 |
Postscript 1
Obviously “dissemination” implies many different kinds of outcomes, especially including the adoption of scholarly innovations. That’s definitely worth studying, though reliable data sources can be hard to come by. For example, for a new variety of functional behavioral assessment, how would you determine how many clinics and agencies have employed it?
Postscript 2
By journals that are “behavior analysis adjacent” I mean those (a) that share a topical focus with selected behavior analysis journals; (b) in which behavior analysts occasionally publish; and/or (c) whose authors occasionally publish in behavior analysis journals.