Digital multimedia tools, research impact, stated and revealed preferences : a rejoinder on the issue of video abstracts

The journal Scientometrics recently featured a study on the citation impact of video abstracts and subsequent debate on the actual scope of the same impact. As things stand, the crucial issue of that debate lies in the motivations behind the authors’ choice to equip (some of) their articles with video abstracts. It can be easily understood that those motivations are hardly observable, and it is indeed agreed that observational limitations make them difficult to unravel. Nonetheless, the debate has seen the emergence of two different positions. The first may be summarized as follows: ask the authors to speak out about their motivations and rely on the elicited answers. The second bases itself on the opposite cornerstone: let the data tell the story about authors’ motivations. This recalls the distinction between stated preferences and revealed preferences. Here I develop some arguments in favor of the latter approach as far as the analysis of new media’s citation impact is concerned.