Where do scientists communicate their work?

A group of Spanish researchers analysed the mentions of scientific papers authored by scientists (affiliated with Spain) on the social media, on Wikipedia, and on news outlets, blogs and policy documents to understand where the consumers of such scientific information were located. They selected 3,653 authors, and the following platforms/modes in their analysis: Twitter, Facebook (public pages only), Wikipedia citations, news mentions, blogs, and peers ("number of received post-publication review in forums such as PubPeer or Publons"). Per their April 11 arXiv preprint paper:

• Social science, environment or ecology, clinical medicine, and agricultural sciences papers had good traction on all platforms/modes.
• Space sciences, geosciences, plant and animal science, biology and biochemistry, molecular biology and genetics, and neuroscience and behaviour had good traction on all platforms/modes except policy reports.
• Immunology, psychiatry/psychology, microbiology, pharmacology and toxicology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and materials science had moderate traction on all platforms/modes.
• Of the lot in the point above, immunology found greater mention in "policy reports", microbiology on Facebook, psychiatry on Wikipedia, and physics in news reports and on blogs.
• Finally, arts and humanities, mathematics, computer science, and economics and business had the "lowest dissemination" on all these channels.
• Overall: "social media plays a central role, blogs and news mentions play an intermediate role, and Wikipedia and policy mentions are positioned in the periphery".

Clearly a useful study, even if it is limited to authors in/from Spain – something the paper itself neglects to mention until page 7.

The data for the analysis was retrieved on March 2021, and the papers included were published between 2016 and 2020. I am not sure if 2020 was included; if it was, the papers on microbiology, molecular biology, pharmacology, and immunology could be over-represented in the results, including the last one in "policy reports".

Even then the results are valuable because they indicate where the science communicators need to be. I would also be interested where the (Spanish?) misinformation and disinformation in these fields are and whether there is any overlap of channels. (An overlap would be unsurprising if only because false information spreads faster, at least on Twitter.)

The authors of the study write in conclusion:

The requirements for defining a communication policy cannot be the same in areas such as Clinical Medicine, which receives great attention from all channels, or Mathematics, which captures less social interest. Likewise, there are scientific fields where a certain channel is particularly relevant. We can conclude that a research dissemination plan or a transfer plan should be adapted to the area in which researchers publish.