Analyzing Graduation Thesis-related Questions on Yahoo! Chiebukuro: Question Distribution, Temporal Trends, and Topical Structures2025 · Background. Undergraduate students often face difficulties in conducting graduation theses, including challenges in topic selection, methodology, information seeking, and writing. Community question answering (CQA) platforms have served as informal support channels, enabling students to share both practical questions related to research tasks and personal concerns that may be difficult to voice in formal academic settings. Objectives. This study aims to reveal the content characteristics, topical diversity, and temporal trends of questions related to graduation theses posted on Yahoo! Chiebukuro, one of the largest CQA platforms in Japan. We analyze not only surface-level attributes such as post categories and question length, but also the underlying topics of each question using topic modeling, in order to capture the kinds of difficulties and interests students have during the graduation thesis process and how these are expressed over time and across categories. Methods. We analyzed 56,160 questions related to graduation theses extracted from Yahoo! Chiebukuro. Descriptive statistics were conducted on attributes such as post categories and question length. Topic modeling using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was applied to identify major themes. We also examined topic distributions across post categories and academic calendar–based quarters. Results. Graduation thesis-related questions appeared across all 18 question categories, with nearly 70% concentrated in the top three. The content ranged from practical issues, such as writing and citations, to personal matters, including relationships and family. Topic modeling yielded six themes, grouped into three areas: (1) Formatting, References, and Research Design, (2) Academic Progress and Graduation Requirements, and (3) Interpersonal and Daily Life Issues. A quarterly analysis showed that students’ informational needs fluctuate throughout the academic year: academic and procedural concerns surface at specific points in the calendar, while personal and interpersonal issues tend to remain stable. Contributions. This study provides a quantitative understanding of the difficulties and concerns students face during a graduation thesis project, based on real-world data from one of the largest CQA platforms in Japan. The findings highlight that students’ information-seeking behaviors extend beyond academic guidance to include personal and psychological struggles, suggesting that such informal resources can play a meaningful role alongside formal academic support structures.
How Retracted Article Persists on YouTube: Retraction Severity, Visibility, and Disclosure2025 · The retraction of scholarly articles due to errors or misconduct reflects fundamental problems in the research process and raises concerns about research integrity. However, retracted articles often continue to circulate online, especially on platforms like YouTube, which may lack effective mechanisms for academic oversight. Despite this concern, little is known about how retracted articles are actually referenced in such environments, and no comprehensive empirical investigations have been conducted to date. To investigate this issue empirically, we analyzed the prevalence and context of retracted article references on YouTube using a large-scale dataset of scholarly references extracted from video description text. We identified 1,002 references to retracted articles, corresponding to 360 unique DOIs, found in 956 videos uploaded by 714 channels. Notably, the channels referencing retracted articles accounted for nearly 1% of all channels referencing scholarly articles. Moreover, approximately 75% of the referenced articles were retracted for serious reasons such as data fabrication or ethical violations. Almost half of the videos referencing retracted articles were published after the retraction date. A substantial portion of these videos do not mention the retraction status, and several appear to reference the articles without recognizing their retracted nature, as suggested by the absence of any mention of retraction in the video content or description text. In contrast, a few videos explicitly addressed the retraction and were intended to educate viewers by highlighting issues of scientific misconduct. These findings highlight the continued circulation of unreliable scholarly information on YouTube and underscore the need for improved visibility of retraction notices in user-generated content.
Enhancing Identification of Scholarly Reference on YouTube: Method Development and Analysis of External Link Characteristics2024 · Scholarly communication through YouTube videos has been increasing. Although Altmetric provides the dataset on such references, its coverage is unclear, and it does not contain the original external links in each video. Further investigation is needed to understand the characteristics of scholarly references as external links in YouTube videos. To address this gap, we propose a method to identify scholarly references by searching for domain names and building a dataset by applying this method. Subsequently, we compare this dataset with the Altmetric dataset and analyze the external link characteristics. Using the proposed method and targeting six types of domain names, we identified approximately 480,000 references among 230,000 videos posted on 55,000 channels. Notably, over half of these references were not covered by the Altmetric dataset, resulting in a 150% increase in the number of references when combining the dataset constructed by the proposed method with the Altmetric dataset, compared to the Altmetric dataset alone. Regarding external links, PubMed and DOI links were prominent; however, a substantial number of direct links to publisher platforms were observed. Most channels and videos contained external links to a single platform, scattered across each platform. The method proposed in this study is helpful for identifying and analyzing scholarly references on YouTube. In addition, the findings on external link characteristics raise concerns about the long-term accessibility and fact-checking of information sources for YouTube video content.
