Does social media contribute to research impact? An Altmetric study of highly-cited marketing research

Abstract

The thorough dissection of prominent scholarly contributions can shed light on the evolution of research trajectories. Using marketing research as a case, this study aims to probe into the recognition and resonance that research enjoys across social media landscapes, employing the power of Altmetric. We employed an analytical approach involving descriptive statistics coupled with the Spearman correlation test, scrutinizing Altmetric data for the most heavily cited works in the marketing discipline (n: 137). Our examination illuminates that the United States and the United Kingdom are the dominant contributors to the majority of tweets and readership relating to these works. Noteworthily, marketing research featured in top-tier publications registered the highest Altmetric scores from both Twitter and Mendeley. An intriguing pattern surfaced in our exploration, highlighting a positive relationship between Altmetric scores drawn from social media platforms and citation counts on the Web of Science (WoS), as well as between Mendeley readership and WoS citations. These Altmetric insights underscore the pivotal role social media plays in propelling citation rates of research, implying that researchers can significantly amplify the visibility and citation impact of their work by strategically employing social media platforms and tapping into Altmetric indicators’ potential.