ScienceDirect is a service that allows people to search for and read full journal articles for many medical and social sciences journals online (which sure beats having to go to the local university library to make copies of them!). Combined with the use of other database services, it allows health journalists like us to read the scientific literature directly — and also put it into some useful context.
Every quarter, SciVerse ScienceDirect’s releases their Top 25 Hottest Articles list for a variety of scientific topics. These are the most read articles, as counted by article downloads on SciVerse ScienceDirect. In other words, these are the most popular articles read through the service.
We’ve excerpted the top 10 from the list, along with our brief comments about the list.
The pull of the Internet is strong in this list, and it appears to be what’s most on people’s minds these days.
Surprisingly, 6 of the top 10 most popular articles in psychology have to do with Facebook. This demonstrates Facebook’s powerful pull in society — even in the world of psychological research. People are most interested in learning how people interact on this popular social network, and why people spend so much time doing so.
1. College students’ social networking experiences on Facebook
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Volume 30, Issue 3, May 2009, Pages 227-238
Pempek, T.A.; Yermolayeva, Y.A.; Calvert, S.L.
Cited by 76 other articles.
2. Personality and motivations associated with Facebook use
Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 25, Issue 2, March 2009, Pages 578-586
Ross, C.; Orr, E.S.; Sisic, M.; Arseneault, J.M.; Simmering, M.G.; Orr, R.R.
Cited by 69 other articles.
3. Who uses Facebook? An investigation into the relationship between the Big Five, shyness, narcissism, loneliness, and Facebook usage
Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 27, Issue 5, September 2011, Pages 1658-1664
Ryan, T.; Xenos, S.
Cited by 8 other articles.
4. Object-based auditory and visual attention
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 12, Issue 5, May 2008, Pages 182-186
Shinn-Cunningham, B.G.
Cited by 45 other articles.
5. Facebook and academic performance
Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 26, Issue 6, November 2010, Pages 1237-1245
Kirschner, P.A.; Karpinski, A.C.
Cited by 21 other articles.
6. Why do people use Facebook?
Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 52, Issue 3, February 2012, Pages 243-249
Nadkarni, A.; Hofmann, S.G.
7. A tale of two sites: Twitter vs. Facebook and the personality predictors of social media usage
Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 28, Issue 2, March 2012, Pages 561-569
Hughes, D.J.; Rowe, M.; Batey, M.; Lee, A.
8. The episodic buffer: a new component of working memory?
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 4, Issue 11, November 2000, Pages 417-423
Baddeley, A.
Cited by 1,207 other articles.
9. Performance management and employee engagement
Human Resource Management Review, Volume 21, Issue 2, June 2011, Pages 123-136
Gruman, J.A.; Saks, A.M.
10. The empirical status of cognitive-behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses
Clinical Psychology Review, Volume 26, Issue 1, January 2006, Pages 17-31
Butler, A.C.; Chapman, J.E.; Forman, E.M.; Beck, A.T.
Cited by 382 other articles.
Check out the Top 25 Hottest Psychology articles for January-March, 2012 over at ScienceDirect.
2 comments
Apparently, the only thing worth researching these days is who is using Facebook and why. This is a terrible list, and does not represent the “hottest psychology articles”, or the field as a whole, in any way.