{"doi":"10.1136/bmjopen-2021-052856","title":"Overall and COVID-19-specific citation impact of highly visible COVID-19 media experts: bibliometric analysis","abstract":"<h4>Objective</h4>To 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.<h4>Design</h4>Cross-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).<h4>Setting</h4>Cable news appearance in prime-time programming or overall media appearances.<h4>Participants</h4>Most highly visible COVID-19 media experts in the USA, Switzerland, Greece and Denmark.<h4>Interventions</h4>None.<h4>Outcome measures</h4>Citation 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.<h4>Results</h4>We 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.<h4>Conclusions</h4>Despite 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.","journal":"BMJ Open","year":2021,"id":2687,"datarank":0.44166584687496613,"base_score":2.9444389791664403,"endowment":2.9444389791664403,"self_citation_contribution":0.44166584687496613,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.44166584687496613,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":18,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.0648,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-10-01","fair_score":20.8333,"fair_percentile":2.132805628847845,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":31121,"name":"Alangoya Tezel","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":31122,"name":"Reshma Jagsi","orcid":"0000-0001-6562-1228","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":148,"name":"John P. 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Ioannidis","orcid":"0000-0003-3118-6859","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":25,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":20.0,"fair_a":42.5,"fair_i":12.5,"fair_r":8.3333,"fair_zscore":-2.2051,"fair_rationale":{"fair_score":20.83,"has_llm":true,"dimensions":{"F":{"name":"Findable","score":20.0,"criteria":[{"key":"f_has_doi","label":"Has a persistent DOI","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":1.0,"signal":"DOI present","rationale":null},{"key":"f_repository_presence","label":"Indexed in repositories / literature DBs","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"datacite=0, pmcid=False, pmid=False","rationale":null},{"key":"f_persistent_ids","label":"Resolvable scholarly identifiers (OpenAlex)","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"no OpenAlex id","rationale":null},{"key":"f_metadata_richness","label":"Rich, machine-readable metadata","kind":"llm","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":null,"rationale":"The paper provides no machine-readable metadata, such as structured identifiers or standardized descriptions beyond the abstract and tables."}]},"A":{"name":"Accessible","score":42.5,"criteria":[{"key":"a_open_access","label":"Open Access / files deposited","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.5,"fraction":1.0,"signal":"Open Access","rationale":null},{"key":"a_retrievable","label":"Free full text retrievable","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"0 OA location(s)","rationale":null},{"key":"a_access_protocol","label":"Clear data/code access protocol","kind":"llm","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.25,"signal":null,"rationale":"A data-availability statement is mentioned in the 'Data availability statement' appendix, but the protocol for accessing the data (e.g., repository links, conditions) is not described in the provided text."}]},"I":{"name":"Interoperable","score":12.5,"criteria":[{"key":"i_linked_data","label":"Linked datasets / DataCite relations","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"linked_datasets=0, datacite=0","rationale":null},{"key":"i_standard_ids","label":"References data via standard accessions","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"accessions=0, trials=0","rationale":null},{"key":"i_standards","label":"Standard formats, vocabularies & identifiers","kind":"llm","weight":1.0,"fraction":0.25,"signal":null,"rationale":"The use of Scopus and a composite citation indicator implies standard bibliometric identifiers, but there is no evidence of explicit use of standard formats, vocabularies, or persistent identifiers for the data itself."}]},"R":{"name":"Reusable","score":8.33,"criteria":[{"key":"r_license","label":"Clear, open reuse license","kind":"deterministic","weight":1.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"no license","rationale":null},{"key":"r_downloads","label":"Demonstrated reuse (downloads)","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"downloads=0","rationale":null},{"key":"r_version","label":"Versioned / maintained","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"no version chain","rationale":null},{"key":"r_dataset","label":"Classified as a data resource","kind":"deterministic","weight":0.5,"fraction":0.0,"signal":"not a dataset","rationale":null},{"key":"r_reusability","label":"Data-availability statement, license & reproducibility","kind":"llm","weight":2.0,"fraction":0.167,"signal":null,"rationale":"An appendix includes a data-availability statement, but no license information, code or data repository links, or detailed methodological metadata are provided to ensure reproducibility."}]}},"suggestions":["Add structured metadata (e.g., DataCite schema) to the paper's landing page for machine readability.","Provide a clear data access protocol including a repository URL and conditions for reuse.","Include license information (e.g., CC0) for any shared data or code in the data-availability statement.","Deposit the citation data and analysis code in a public repository (e.g., Zenodo) with persistent identifiers.","Use standard identifiers (e.g., ORCID, DOI, RRID) for authors, data, and software within the paper."],"model":"deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash","agent_version":"fair_agent_v1","fulltext_source":"abstract_only"},"fair_model":"deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash","fair_agent_version":"fair_agent_v1","fair_fulltext_source":"abstract_only","fair_has_llm":true,"fair_computed_at":"2026-06-14T20:30:10.452018Z","clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}