Abstract
Background:Altmetrics measure the impact of journal articles by tracking social media, Wikipedia, public policy documents, blogs, and mainstream news activity, after which an overall Altmetric attention score (AAS) is calculated for every journal article. In this study, we aim to assess the AAS for influenza related articles and its relation to the influenza season in the USA. Methods:This study used the openly available Altmetric data from Altmetric.com. First, we retrieved all influenza-related articles using an advanced PubMed search query, then we inputted the resulted query into Altmetric explorer. We then calculated the average AAS for each month during the years 2012-2018. Results : A total of 24,964 PubMed documents were extracted, among them, 12,395 documents had at least one attention. We found a significant difference in mean AAS between February and each of January and March (p< 0.001, mean difference of 117.4 and 460.7, respectively). We found a significant difference between June and each of May and July (p< 0.001, mean difference of 1221.4 and 162.7, respectively). We also found a significant difference between October and each of September and November (p< 0.001, mean difference of 88.8 and 154.8, respectively). Conclusion:We observed a seasonal trend in the attention toward influenza-related research, with three annual peaks that correlated with the beginning, peak, and end of influenza seasons in the USA, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.
Highlights
Altmetrics measure the impact of journal articles by tracking social media, Wikipedia, public policy documents, blogs and mainstream news activity, after which an overall Altmetric attention score (AAS) is calculated for every journal article[3]
Following post-hoc analysis, we found a significant difference in mean AAS between February and each of January (p< 0.001, mean difference of 117.4 with 95% confidence interval (CI): 89.7 to 145.2) and March (p< 0.001, mean difference of 460.7 with 95% CI: 430.2 to 491.1)
We found a significant difference between June and each of May (p< 0.001, mean difference of 1221.4 with 95% CI: 87.0 to 155.8) and July (p< 0.001, mean difference of 162.7 with 95% CI: 126.1 to 199.2)
Summary
The authors must mention after the paper mentioned [Ref 10] that their study is designed along with this principle They will filter the influenza mention in the Altmetric data obtained to only those related to the USA. This must be mentioned otherwise; a significant criticism could come to the reader's mind. Conclusion: We observed a seasonal trend in the attention toward influenza-related research, with three annual peaks that correlated with the beginning, peak, and end of influenza seasons in the USA, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data
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