Re: Nicholas Corsi, David-Dan Nguyen, Mohit Butaney, et al. Top 100 Urology Influencers on Twitter: Is Social Media Influence Associated with Academic Impact? Eur Urol Focus. In press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euf.2022.09.009: Hirsch versus Kardashian: Assessing Discrepancies in Social Media Influence Versus Productivity and Citation Impact of Urological Influencers

Abstract

With interest and fascination, we followed the lively discussions on Twitter in response to the article written by Corsi et al. [ [1] Corsi N, Nguyen DD, Butaney M, et al. Top 100 urology influencers on Twitter: is social media influence associated with academic impact? Eur Urol Focus. In press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euf.2022.09.009. Google Scholar ] on whether social media influence is associated with academic impact. The authors used a publicly available algorithm to identify the top 100 urology influencers in a similar fashion as for previous reports in orthopedics, plastic surgery, cardiology, and other fields [ 2 Varady N.H. Chandawarkar A.A. Kernkamp W.A. Gans I. Who should you be following? The top 100 social media influencers in orthopaedic surgery. World J Orthop. 2019; 10: 327-338 Crossref PubMed Scopus (24) Google Scholar , 3 Chandawarkar A.A. Gould D.J. Grant S.W. The top 100 social media influencers in plastic surgery on Twitter: who should you be following?. Aesthet Surg J. 2018; 38: 913-917 Crossref PubMed Scopus (36) Google Scholar , 4 Kesiena O. Onyeaka H.K. Fugar S. Okoh A.K. Volgman A.S. The top 100 Twitter influencers in cardiology. AIMS Public Health. 2021; 8: 743-753 Crossref PubMed Google Scholar ]. The algorithm, however, is not transparent in construct and seems to favor physicians with strong track records in scholarly publishing and high citation impact, as reflected by the overall high average Hirsch (H) index for the ranked individuals. Several urologists with a high Twitter following are not shortlisted: @drrachelrubin (14 511 followers), @kjdelay1 (12 011), and @GuidoGiusti (9459) are examples of Twitter accounts of urologists with a higher following than several of those in the shortlist by Corsi and colleagues (average of 6195 followers). As discussed in the article itself, @AshleyGWinter ranks relatively low in influence score at number 57 despite having a Twitter following of a staggering 112 107 accounts [ [1] Corsi N, Nguyen DD, Butaney M, et al. Top 100 urology influencers on Twitter: is social media influence associated with academic impact? Eur Urol Focus. In press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euf.2022.09.009. Google Scholar ]. Hence, the proprietary algorithm that was used seems to give relatively low weight to followers and relatively more weight to connections to other influencers on a particular topic (“urology”) and engagement [ 1 Corsi N, Nguyen DD, Butaney M, et al. Top 100 urology influencers on Twitter: is social media influence associated with academic impact? Eur Urol Focus. In press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euf.2022.09.009. Google Scholar , 3 Chandawarkar A.A. Gould D.J. Grant S.W. The top 100 social media influencers in plastic surgery on Twitter: who should you be following?. Aesthet Surg J. 2018; 38: 913-917 Crossref PubMed Scopus (36) Google Scholar ]. We do know that the algorithm favors several senior authors of the manuscript, at least one reviewer, and the handling editor of the journal. This may potentially reflect some publication bias from the editor and reviewer and conflicts of interest of the authors being involved in why this algorithm was chosen above other available methods. Criticisms voiced on Twitter further included notions that the analysis and interpretation are probably biased favoring the academia-centric world view and that the algorithm used is unlikely to serve as a reasonable starting point for realistic investigation of social media impact (dated October 10, 2022, quoted as an anonymous opinion, as otherwise this would violate the “right to be forgotten” [ [5] Carter E.L. The right to be forgotten. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK2016 Google Scholar ]).