Abstract
Background Research impact has traditionally been measured using citation count and impact factor (IF). Academics have long relied heavily on this form of metric system to measure a publication’s impact. A higher number of citations is viewed as an indicator of the importance of the research and a marker for the impact of the publishing journal. Recently, social media and online news sources have become important avenues for dissemination of research, resulting in the emergence of an alternative metric system known as altmetrics. Objective We assessed the correlation between altmetric attention score (AAS) and traditional scientific impact markers, namely journal IF and article citation count, for all the dermatology journal and published articles of 2017. Methods We identified dermatology journals and their associated IFs available in 2017 using InCites Journal Citation Reports. We entered all 64 official dermatology journals into Altmetric Explorer, a Web-based platform that enables users to browse and report on all attention data for every piece of scholarly content for which Altmetric Explorer has found attention. Results For the 64 dermatology journals, there was a moderate positive correlation between journal IF and journal AAS (rs=.513, P<.001). In 2017, 6323 articles were published in the 64 dermatology journals. Our data show that there was a weak positive correlation between the traditional article citation count and AAS (rs=.257, P<.001). Conclusions Our data show a weak correlation between article citation count and AAS. Temporal factors may explain this weak association. Newer articles may receive increased online attention after publication, while it may take longer for scientific citation counts to accumulate. Stories that are at times deemed newsworthy and then disseminated across the media and social media platforms border on sensationalism and may not be truly academic in nature. The opposite can also be true.
Highlights
Research impact has traditionally been measured using citation count and impact factor (IF)
Our data show a weak correlation between article citation count and altmetric attention score (AAS)
Newer articles may receive increased online attention after publication, while it may take longer for scientific citation counts to accumulate
Summary
Research impact has traditionally been measured using citation count and impact factor (IF). Academics have long relied on this form of metric system to measure a publication’s impact [1]. Altmetrics is data that can explain both the nature and volume of attention that research receives. It measures how many people have engaged with and shared research and allows the researchers or publishers to see in what manner it was shared. Academics have long relied heavily on this form of metric system to measure a publication’s impact. A higher number of citations is viewed as an indicator of the importance of the research and a marker for the impact of the publishing journal. Social media and online news sources have become important avenues for dissemination of research, resulting in the emergence of an alternative metric system known as altmetrics
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