The bibliometric and altmetric analysis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy research: how great is the impact?

Abstract

The study of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) has received great attention from academia and the general public. This study aims to analyze the research productivity on CTE and investigate the most discussed articles in academia and the general public by conducting bibliometric and altmetric analyses. Data of articles were obtained from the Web of Science Core Databases and Altmetric Explore. VOSviewer and CiteSpace software were used to analyze and visualize the articles. The correlation between Altmetric attention scores (AAS) and citation counts were assessed by Spearman correlation coefficient. 788 publications of CTE were eventually gathered and analyzed, and 100 articles with highest citation counts (Top-cited) and 100 articles with highest AASs (Top-AAS) were then identified. The keywords density map showed both the general public and the scientists were particularly interested in the risk factors and pathology of CTE, and scientists were interested in the causes and characteristics of neurodegenerative diseases while the public became increasingly concerned about the detection and prevention of CTE. By examining the shared characteristics of the 44 articles (High-High articles) that overlapped between Top-cited and Top-AAS articles, we identified certain traits that may potentially contribute to their high citation rates and high AASs. Besides, significant positive correlations with varied strength between AAS and citation were observed in the 788 articles, Top-cited, Top-AAS and High-High datasets. This study is the first to link bibliometric and altmetric analyses for CTE publications, which may provide deeper understanding of the attention of the scientists and the general public pay to the study of CTE, and offer some guidance and inspiration for future CTE in the selection of research topics and directions.