Social Media Coverage of Scientific Articles Immediately After Publication Predicts Subsequent Citations - #SoME_Impact Score: Observational Analysis.
bibliometrics
online intervention
online social networking
online systems
social media
Journal
Journal of medical Internet research
ISSN: 1438-8871
Titre abrégé: J Med Internet Res
Pays: Canada
ID NLM: 100959882
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
17 04 2020
17 04 2020
Historique:
received:
21
09
2018
accepted:
12
06
2019
revised:
07
06
2019
entrez:
18
4
2020
pubmed:
18
4
2020
medline:
4
11
2020
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
Social 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. We, 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. We 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 month's 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. In 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 R Social 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.
Sections du résumé
BACKGROUND
Social 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.
OBJECTIVE
We, 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.
METHODS
We 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 month's 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.
RESULTS
In 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 R
CONCLUSIONS
Social 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.
Identifiants
pubmed: 32301733
pii: v22i4e12288
doi: 10.2196/12288
pmc: PMC7195668
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
e12288Informations de copyright
©Niranjan Jude Sathianathen, Robert Lane III, Declan G Murphy, Stacy Loeb, Caitlin Bakker, Alastair D Lamb, Christopher J Weight. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 17.04.2020.
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