Abstract
Citations are used to assess the importance of authors, articles and journals in the scientific community, but do not examine how they affect general public journal readership. The Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) is a new metric for measuring media attention of the published paper. We examined cardiovascular (CV) randomized clinical trials (RCTs), published in the 3 highest Web of Science Impact Factor journals (Journal Citation Reports 2019: category "Medicine, General & Internal") and in the 3 highest Web of Science Impact Factor CV journals (Journal Citation Reports 2019: category "Cardiac & Cardiovascular Systems"), through the calendar year of 2017, 2018 and 2019. The primary outcomes were the assessment of the difference between number of citations and AAS among positive and negative CV RCTs. Among the included 262 RCTs, more positive CV RCTs were published (p = 0.002). There was no significant statistical difference between the positive and negative trials, considering the number of citations (p = 0.61). Interestingly, positive trials had a tendency towards a higher AAS (p = 0.058). The correlation between the AAS and the number of citations was moderate positively correlated (ρ = 0.47, p < 0.001). We did not find any differences between CV RCTs with positive vs CV RCTs with negative results considering the number of their citations. A tendency towards a higher AAS among positive CV RCTs could indicate higher activity on social media regarding CV trials with positive results. A higher number of published positive CV RCTs among all published CV RCTs could indicate the presence of publication bias but further investigation of unpublished RCTs in trial registries (e.g., clinicaltrials.gov) is needed.
Highlights
Clinical research is the cornerstone of innovation in medical development
It is possible that inadequate design and poor conduction of the randomized clinical trial (RCT) could lead to negative results, even for interventions that have an effect [5]
Positive trials had higher likelihood to be non-inferior by their design, and noninferiority trials were more often funded by the industry, when adjusted for time since published
Summary
Clinical research is the cornerstone of innovation in medical development. Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) form the basis of evidence-based practice [1,2]. Negative results prevent adoption of those interventions in clinical practice [6] They lead to decreasing or aborting further research investment in those interventions. The primary outcomes were the assessment of the difference between number of citations and AAS among positive and negative CV RCTs. Results: Among the included 262 RCTs, more positive CV RCTs were published (p = 0.002). There was no significant statistical difference between the positive and negative trials, considering the number of citations (p = 0.61). Conclusion: We did not find any differences between CV RCTs with positive vs CV RCTs with negative results considering the number of their citations. A tendency towards a higher AAS among positive CV RCTs could indicate higher activity on social media regarding CV trials with positive results. A higher number of published positive CV RCTs among all published CV RCTs could indicate the presence of publication bias but further investigation of unpublished RCTs in trial registries (e.g., clinicaltrials.gov) is needed
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