Year-end Sale % OFF 
Abstract
BackgroundSocial media coverage is increasingly used to spread the message of scientific publications. Traditionally, the scientific impact of an article is measured by the number of citations. At a journal level, this conventionally matures over a 2-year period, and it is challenging to gauge impact around the time of publication.ObjectiveWe, therefore, aimed to assess whether Web-based attention is associated with citations and to develop a predictive model that assigns relative importance to different elements of social media coverage: the #SoME_Impact score.MethodsWe included all original articles published in 2015 in a selection of the highest impact journals: The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Nature, Cell, and Science. We first characterized the change in Altmetric score over time by taking a single monthâs sample of recently published articles from the same journals and gathered Altmetric data daily from the time of publication to create a mixed effects spline model. We then obtained the overall weighted Altmetric score for all articles from 2015, the unweighted data for each Altmetric component, and the 2-year citation count from Scopus for each of these articles from 2016 to 2017. We created a stepwise multivariable linear regression model to develop a #SoME_Score that was predictive of 2-year citations. The score was validated using a dataset of articles from the same journals published in 2016.ResultsIn our unselected sample of 145 recently published articles, social media coverage appeared to plateau approximately 14 days after publication. A total of 3150 articles with a median citation count of 16 (IQR 5-33) and Altmetric score of 72 (IQR 28-169) were included for analysis. On multivariable regression, compared with articles in the lowest quantile of #SoME_Score, articles in the second, third, and upper quantiles had 0.81, 15.20, and 87.67 more citations, respectively. On the validation dataset, #SoME_Score model outperformed the Altmetric score (adjusted R2 0.19 vs 0.09; P<.001). Articles in the upper quantile of #SoME_Score were more than 5 times more likely to be among the upper quantile of those cites (odds ratio 5.61, 95% CI 4.70-6.73).ConclusionsSocial media attention predicts citations and could be used as an early surrogate measure of scientific impact. Owing to the cross-sectional study design, we cannot determine whether correlation relates to causation.
Highlights
A direct reflection of the digital age, scientific work is primarily disseminated Web-based rather than in the conventional hard copy format [1]
We obtained Altmetric data for each of the included publications by matching digital object identifier OR (DOI). This included the automatically calculated, weighted Altmetric score generated by Altmetric, which is an approximation of the attention a particular research output has received based on the raw number of news, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Sina Weibo, Wikipedia, policy documents, Q&A, F1000/Publons/PubPeer, YouTube, Reddit/Pinterest, LinkedIn, Open Syllabus, Google+, and Patents
In contrast to the primary dataset of articles, articles in the Journal of Medical Internet Research in the top 25% of Altmetric scores were more likely to be those with a high citation count
Summary
A direct reflection of the digital age, scientific work is primarily disseminated Web-based rather than in the conventional hard copy format [1]. The academic community has embraced the internet as a medium for discussion and debate with the increasing emergence of social mediaâfacilitated journal clubs [2] These facets of academia have evolved with the times and technology, measures of scientific impact still generally rely on the traditional citation counts and lag behind. It includes a wealth of information that could be used to circumvent the time delay to formal citations and thereby provide an earlier measure of scientific impact. This has substantial implications on a communal and individual level. This conventionally matures over a 2-year period, and it is challenging to gauge impact around the time of publication
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
