When do tweeters tweet about science?

<p>The potential of Twitter in the dissemination of scientific publications has raised considerable scholarly attention. However, timely patterns of interaction with scientific publications on Twitter have not been covered broadly so far. This study examines the dates of when scientific publications are tweeted, focusing on weekdays and months. For that, data was collected from Altmetric.com, comprising of 25,227,143 tweets spanning the years 2012 to 2016. Next to inquiring general patterns of tweeting dates, subsets of three different Western European countries, several North African states, and South Africa were observed. In general, the highest number of tweets can be observed on Thursdays, with decreasing activity towards the weekend. Concerning months, most tweets can be found in November, with both October and December following close by. January is the month of least activity. Comparing countries, timely variations in tweeting activity were found. The authors conclude that the reception of scholarly publications on Twitter is following certain timely patterns, while geographical as well as cultural backgrounds of tweeters may influence those.</p>