This article was originally published here
J Med Internet Res. 2020 Dec 12. doi: 10.2196/21408. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The use of social media assists in the distribution of information about COVID-19 to the general public and health professionals. Alternative-level metrics (Altmetrics) and PlumX metrics are new methods that can assess the amount of sharing and spreading of a scientific article in social media platforms.
OBJECTIVE: Our objective was to characterize and compare traditional bibliometrics (citation-count and impact factors) with newer metrics (Altmetric Attention Score and PlumX Score) of the top 100 Altmetric scored COVID-19 articles.
METHODS: The 100 highest Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) articles were identified utilizing the Altmetric explorer in May 2020. AAS, journal name, and mentions from various social media databases of each article were collected. Citation-counts and PlumX Weighted Citation Impact scores were collected from the Scopus database. Additionally, AAS, PlumX scores, and citation-counts were log-transformed and adjusted by +1 for linear regression, and Spearman correlation coefficients were utilized to determine correlations.
RESULTS: The median AAS, PlumX score, and citation-count were 4922.50, 37.92, and 24.00, respectively. Of 100 articles, New England Journal of Medicine published the most articles at 18% (18/100). Twitter was the most frequently used social media platform with 96.3% of the mentions (985,429/1,022,975). Positive correlations were seen between AAS and citation-count (r2=.0973; P=.002), and PlumX score and citation-count (r2=.8911; P<.001).
CONCLUSIONS: Our research demonstrates that citation-count is weakly correlated with AAS, but strongly correlated with PlumX scores regarding COVID-19 articles at this point in time. Altmetrics and PlumX metrics should be utilized in complement with traditional citation-count when assessing the dissemination and impact of an article regarding COVID-19.
PMID:33406049 | DOI:10.2196/21408
