P60. The top 100 spine surgery articles on social media: an altmetric study

Abstract

BACKGROUND CONTEXT This study aims to discern how social media outlets contributed to spine surgery literature dissemination and to investigate how popular articles compared to articles with most citations. Scientific literature is increasingly distributed via social media. The influence of social media on the promulgation of orthopedic spine surgery literature has not been investigated. The Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) is calculated from each article's social media presence in outlets such as news, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. PURPOSE This study will determine if any factors are associated with online popularity as measured by AAS. The primary aim of this investigation is to discern what social media outlets most contribute to dissemination of spine surgery literature. Our secondary purpose is to investigate how article popularity compares to traditional metrics such as citations and impact factors. STUDY DESIGN/SETTING Retrospective. PATIENT SAMPLE A total of 13,601 peer-reviewed articles on spine surgery were included. OUTCOME MEASURES AAS, social media presence, citation number. METHODS The Altmetric database was used to perform a search of nine spine surgery journals from January 2010-October 2019. AAS-related variable averages were summarized alongside metrics such as citation count and impact factor. Spearman rank and time-controlled partial correlations examined the association between AAS and online sources, readers and citations. Journals were grouped by impact factor, and an analysis-of-variance compared mean AAS. The 100 highest AAS articles were compared to the 100 most cited. RESULTS A total of 13,601 articles included. The mean AAS was 5.3 ± 29.8, with Twitter contributing the most (4.5). The three highest associations were Twitter (0.649 vs 0.755), news (0.537 vs 0.857), and Facebook (0.409 vs 0.501). There was no significance between impact factor and AAS. Comparing the top 100 AAS articles to those with most citations, the most popular articles on social media had more article types (10 types vs 5 types), more prospective studies (42 vs 21), fewer retrospective studies (22 vs 40), fewer reviews (7 vs 17) and fewer systematic reviews (14 vs 20). Spine contributed the most articles in the top 100 AAS and citation sets. There is a weak correlation between impact factor and citation rate, and there is not statistically significant relationship between Altmetric attention score and impact factor (p CONCLUSIONS This is the first study using the AAS to evaluate social media underpinnings of peer-reviewed spine surgery literature dissemination. Our evaluation revealed Twitter, newsfeeds and Facebook were the most significant social media outlets. Compared to articles with the greatest citations, the most popular articles are prospective and encompass broader study designs. Social media plays an integral role in article dissemination in spine literature and the public sphere. FDA DEVICE/DRUG STATUS This abstract does not discuss or include any applicable devices or drugs.