Altmetric and bibliometric analysis of obstetrics and gynecology research: influence of public engagement on citation potential

Online Attention to Articles Published in Otolaryngology Journals

Importance

The internet has changed the way that medical information by journals is disseminated, with a shift toward online distribution. Given this, it is important to include alternative metrics that measure online attention when determining the influence of otolaryngology journals.

Objective

To describe a ranking system for otolaryngology journals that reflects the amount of publicity received online and to determine factors associated with these rankings.

Design and Setting

In this cross-sectional study, online attention was measured using Altmetric Attention Scores obtained for all 26 112 articles published by the 43 journals classified under the Journal Citation Reports category of otorhinolaryngology from 2018 to 2022. Data were analyzed from January to June 2023.

Main Outcomes and Measures

Altmetric journal rankings were created from the top 500 articles with the highest Altmetric Attention Scores, using a rank sum weight-based method to assign credit for an article's attention online to its respective journal. The association of article content, study design and type, and social media presence on X (formerly Twitter) with ranking was examined. Comparisons between Altmetric journal rankings and bibliometric rankings (5-year Impact Factor) were also performed.

Results

Of 43 otolaryngology journals, JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery had the highest Altmetric journal ranking. Most articles in the Altmetric top 500 were nonoperative clinical studies (220 articles [43.5%]) or described the natural history of disease (176 articles [34.9%]) and involved otology/neurotology (158 articles [29.9%]) or rhinology/allergy (134 articles [25.4%]). The COVID-19 pandemic was a common topic (169 articles [33.5%]). The presence of an active X account for the entire 5-year period was associated with a higher Altmetric total rank sum score for journals (η2 = 0.07; 95% CI, 0.02-0.13 [moderate effect size]). There was a moderate statistically significant correlation between Altmetric journal rankings and 5-year Impact Factor rankings (r = 0.5; 95% CI, 0.2-0.7).

Conclusions and Relevance

This cross-sectional study demonstrates that metrics based on online attention provide an alternative way to assess the reach and influence of medical journals. Journals seeking to expand their influence online may benefit from a presence on social media.

Foreword: Clinically Focused Insights on the Placenta and Umbilical Cord: An Evidence-based Symposium

In this symposium, we introduce a collection of reviews that delve into the diverse clinically relevant aspects of the placenta and umbilical cord. The symposium addresses placenta previa and abruption; pathology, genetics, and imaging of the placenta; infections of the placenta; and ischemic placental disease. The umbilical cord's essential function as a fetal lifeline is explored, with an emphasis on the clinical repercussions of its dysfunction, including vasa previa and other umbilical cord abnormalities. This curated collection of reviews, which synthesizes the placenta's and umbilical cord's fundamental role in maternal-fetal health, underscores the clinical importance of these structures in pregnancy.

An analysis of the top 500 anesthesiology publications with the highest altmetric attention scores

Altmetrics is a web-based measurement method that assesses the online dissemination and interactions of an article. We performed an altmetric analysis of 500 papers with the highest altmetric attention score (AAS) published in anesthesiology-related journals. Journals were identified from the Web of Science (WoS) Master Journal List by Clarivate using the category "Anesthesiology." The altmetric data were obtained from the Altmetric Explorer database. The first 500 publications with the highest AAS scores among these journals were identified and analyzed. Using Spearman correlation, no correlation was observed between the AAS and either WoS or Google Scholar citations (R = 0.188, P < .001 and R = 0.161, P < .001, respectively). There was a weak correlation between blog mentions and both WoS citations and Google Scholar citations (R = 0.263, P < .001 and (R = 0.241, P < .001). A very strong correlation was observed between the number of Mendeley readers and both WoS and Google Scholar citations (R = 0.889, P < .001 and R = 0.905, P < .001). A significant difference in AAS and WoS citations was observed based on publication topic (P = .036 and P = .005, respectively), with algology being the most common topic (n = 206, 41.2%). Although AAS did not significantly affect traditional scientific citations, the analysis of subgroup correlations revealed notable differences. Our results suggest that traditional scientific citations (WoS and Google Scholar citations) are strongly influenced by the number of Mendeley readers. Further research is needed to understand these dynamics in academic discourse.

Bibliometric analysis of United States and global obstetrical pharmacy literature from 1994 to 2023

BACKGROUND

Federal research policy in the U.S. changed in the early 1990s to include more pregnant patients in clinical research. However, pregnancy outcomes in the United States have gradually declined over the past few decades. Little research has been conducted to characterize U.S. obstetrical pharmacy publications and compare them with global trends.

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to measure the volume and types of U.S. and non-U.S. obstetrical pharmacy literature over 30 years to characterize research in this specialty. The secondary objectives included measuring trends in authorship and citations and performing a text-mining analysis of obstetrical pharmacy publications.

METHODS

This bibliometric analysis used the Web of Science database to identify obstetrical pharmacy documents published between 1994 and 2023 in the United States and non-U.S. countries. Articles were included if they contained obstetrical or pregnancy topics and were within the pharmacy and pharmacology research areas. Data on document types, citations, authors, and common words were collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics.

RESULTS

A total of 12,190 obstetrical pharmacy documents met the inclusion criteria, representing only 2.8% of global obstetrical publications. The United States had the most documents (29.6%), followed by China (10.7%), Italy (5%), the United Kingdom (3.2%), and Canada (3.2%). U.S. and non-U.S. documents increased exponentially (R2 = 0.9485 and 0.979, respectively) over the 30 years. Text-mining analysis showed that both groups had common research topics and interests.

CONCLUSION

Pharmacy documents represent a small proportion of obstetrical publications amidst worsening maternal outcomes in the United States. Despite the exponential growth in obstetrical publication frequency, the overall contribution from the United States is at risk of being superseded by that of China. High international collaboration and citations of U.S. documents may provide opportunities to increase future scientific production in this area and improve patient outcomes.

Role of Altmetric Attention Scores in Evaluating the Influence of Spine Surgery Research

STUDY DESIGN

Retrospective cohort.

OBJECTIVE

To analyze the annual trends in the most prevalent topics, journals, and geographic regions of the top 100 spine surgery articles, as determined by altmetric attention scores (AASs). We also describe the relationship between AAS and traditional article metrics.

BACKGROUND

The rapid growth of social media has transformed how medical literature is disseminated and perceived, including within the field of spine surgery. AAS is a metric that characterizes an article's reach and impact in various online sources.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We reviewed the Altmetric database to identify the top 100 spine surgery articles by AAS from 2015 to 2020 across 8 leading spine journals. Article topics, geographic origins, and publishing journals were analyzed. Correlation analyses were performed between AAS and traditional metrics.

RESULTS

Five hundred forty-one studies met the inclusion criteria. The majority were published in Spine (34.4%), TheSpine Journal (25.7%), European Spine Journal (15.0%), and Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine (14.2%). North America and Europe were the predominant regions of origin. The most common topics were injections (12.2%), diagnostics (11.8%), and complications (11.3%). A weak correlation was found between AAS and traditional metrics such as impact factor (Pearson coefficient = 0.041), total citations (0.051), and citations per year (0.048).

CONCLUSIONS

Although AAS provides insights into the public and online engagement of articles, it shows only a weak correlation with traditional metrics. Therefore, AAS should be considered a complementary metric for gauging the impact of research. In the era of social media, authors should continue to promote their research to broaden readership, however further investigation into characterizing article impact is warranted.

The Top 100 Most-Cited Articles on Religion from 2010 to 2023: A Bibliometric and Altmetric Analysis

In this study, we conducted a bibliometric and altmetric analysis of the top 100 most-cited articles on religion from 2010 to 2023. The data were sourced from the Web of Science Core Collection database. VOSviewer was utilized to create visualization knowledge maps such as co-authorship, co-citation, and keywords co-occurrence analysis, and the Spearman correlation analysis was performed to determine the relationships between the variables. The results indicate that these articles were published in 22 journals by 231 authors in 158 institutions across 24 countries. Most of the articles were published from the USA. Kenneth I. Pargament and Harold G. Koenig were identified as two of the most prominent scholars, while the Journal of Religion and Health and the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality emerged as the most productive and influential journals. The citations for these articles span a range of 45 to 828, whereas the altmetric attention scores (AAS) vary from 1 to 797. The Spearman correlation analysis revealed that the AAS is weakly positively correlated with the article influence score (AIS) ( r = 0.285 ) and weakly negatively correlated with the number of years since publication (NYsP) ( r = - 0.233 ), but is not significantly correlated with other bibliometric indicators; however, it is posited that the importance of the AAS may increase over time as the influence of social media continues to expand.

Effects of open access publishing on article metrics in Neuropsychopharmacology

Neuropsychopharmacology (NPP) offers the option to publish articles in different tiers of an open access (OA) publishing system: Green, Bronze, or Hybrid. Green articles follow a standard access (SA) subscription model, in which readers must pay a subscription fee to access article content on the publisher's website. Bronze articles are selected at the publisher's discretion and offer free availability to readers at the same article processing charge (APC) as Green articles. Hybrid articles are fully OA, but authors pay an increased APC to ensure public access. Here, we aimed to determine whether publishing tier affect the impact and reach of scientific articles in NPP. A sample of 6000 articles published between 2001-2021 were chosen for the analysis. Articles were separated by article type and publication year. Citation counts and Altmetric scores were compared between the three tiers. Bronze articles received significantly more citations than Green and Hybrid articles overall. However, when analyzed by year, Bronze and Hybrid articles received comparable citation counts within the past decade. Altmetric scores were comparable between all tiers, although this effect varied by year. Our findings indicate that free availability of article content on the publisher's website is associated with an increase in citations of NPP articles but may only provide a moderate boost in Altmetric score. Overall, our results suggest that easily accessible article content is most often cited by readers, but that the higher APCs of Hybrid tier publishing may not guarantee increased scholarly or social impact.

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

Background

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.

Methods

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.

Results

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.

Conclusion

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.

The 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned COVID-19-related radiological articles: a comparative bibliometric analysis

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to identify the 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19)-related radiological articles and compare their characteristics.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We searched the Web of Science and Altmetric.com using the search terms "COVID," "COVID-19," "Coronavirus," "SARS-CoV-2," "nCoV," and "pandemic" to identify the most-cited and most-mentioned COVID-19-related articles. We identified the top 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned articles in the field of radiology, regardless of their publication journal. We extracted the information from the listed articles and compared the characteristics between the most-cited and most-mentioned.

RESULTS

Thirty (30%) articles were featured in the lists of the most-cited and most-mentioned articles. The comparison of the 100 most-cited and most-mentioned articles on each list showed that the most frequently cited articles were published in November 2020 and before (p < .001), originated from China (p < .001), covered the topic of diagnosis of COVID-19 (p < .001), and were related to the subspecialty of pulmonary imaging (p < .001); the most frequently mentioned articles were published in December 2020 and after (p < .001), originated from the USA (p < .001), covered the topic of diagnosis of sequelae of COVID-19 (p = .013) and post-vaccination complications (p < .001), and were related to the subspecialties of cardiac imaging (p < .001) and neuroradiology (p < .013).

CONCLUSION

Significant differences were observed in publication date, country of origin, topic, and subspecialty of scientific knowledge related to COVID-19 in the field of radiology, between citation and public dissemination.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE STATEMENT

This bibliometric analysis compares the 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned COVID-19-related radiologic articles, aiming to provide valuable insights into the patterns of knowledge dissemination during the pandemic era.

KEY POINTS

• Thirty articles were featured on the lists of the 100 most-cited and 100 most-mentioned COVID-19-related articles. • The 70 unique most-cited articles more frequently originated from China (48.6%), while the unique most-mentioned articles more frequently originated from the USA (51.4%) (p < 0.001). • The 70 unique most-mentioned articles were more frequently related to cardiac imaging (25.7% vs.0%, p < 0.001) and neuroradiology (15.7% vs. 1.4%, p < 0.005) compared to the unique most-mentioned articles.

Twitter Gynecologic Surgery Journal Club: Impact on Citation Scores and Social Media Attention

STUDY OBJECTIVE

To study the impact of a Twitter-based gynecologic surgery journal club of articles published in the Journal of Minimally Invasive Gynecology (JMIG) on their social media attention and citation scores.

DESIGN

A cross-sectional study.

SETTING

N/A.

PATIENTS

N/A.

INTERVENTIONS

Comparison of citation and social media attention scores was conducted for all articles presented in the JMIG Twitter Journal Club (#JMIGjc), a monthly scientific discussion on Twitter of JMIG selected articles, between March 2018 and September 2021 (group A), with 2 matched control groups of other JMIG articles: group B, articles mentioned on social media but not promoted in any JMIG social media account, and group C, articles with no social media mentions and not presented in #JMIGjc. Matching was performed for publication year, design, and topic in a 1:1:1 ratio. Citation metrics included number of citations per year (CPY) and relative citation ratio (RCR). Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) was used to measure social media attention. This score tracks research articles' online activity from different sources such as social media platforms, blogs, and websites. We further compared group A with all JMIG articles published during the same period (group D).

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS

Thirty-nine articles were presented in the #JMIGjc (group A) and were matched to 39 articles in groups B and C. Median AAS was higher in group A than groups B and C (10.00 vs 3.00 vs 0, respectively, p <.001). CPY and RCR were similar among groups. Median AAS was higher in group A than group D (10.00 vs 1.00, p <.001), as were median CPY and RCR (3.00 vs 1.67, p = .001; 1.37 vs 0.89, p = .001, respectively).

CONCLUSION

Although citation metrics were similar among groups, #JMIGjc articles had higher social media attention metrics than matched controls. Compared with all publications within the same journal, #JMIGjc articles resulted in higher citation metrics.

The 100 most cited papers in nasopharyngeal carcinoma between 2000 and 2019: a bibliometric study

Background

To identify the 100 most-cited papers that have contributed to the understanding and treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC).

Methods

We searched the NPC-related papers between 2000 and 2019 using the Web of Science database on October 12, 2022. Papers were identified in descending order according to the number of citations. The top 100 papers were analyzed.

Results

These 100 most cited papers on NPC have been cited for a total of 35,273 times, with a median number of citations of 281 times. There were 84 research papers and 16 review papers. The Journal of Clinical Oncology (n=17), International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics (n=13), and Cancer Research (n=9) published the most papers. Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, Lancet, Cancer Cell, Molecular Cancer, and the New England Journal of Medicine had the largest average citations per paper. China contributed the most papers (n=71), followed by USA (n=13), Singapore (n=4) and, France (n=4). There were 55 clinical research papers and 29 laboratory research papers. Intensity-modulated radiation therapy technology (n=13), concurrent chemoradiotherapy (n=9), and neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (n=5) were the top three research topics. Epstein-Barr virus-related genes (n=9) and noncoding RNA (n=8) were the research domains in laboratory research papers. The top three contributors were Jun Ma (n=9), Anthony T C Chan (n=8), and Anne Wing-Mui Lee (n=6).

Conclusions

This study provides an overview of the major areas of interest in the field of NPC with bibliometric analyses. This analysis recognizes some important contributions in the field of NPC and stimulates future investigations in the scientific community.

A bibliometric and visualized analysis of liver fibrosis from 2002 to 2022

Fibrosis of the liver is a degenerative alteration that occurs in the majority of chronic liver disorders. Further progression can lead to cirrhosis, liver failure, and hepatocellular carcinoma, which can seriously affect the health and lives of patients. The field of liver fibrosis research has flourished in the last 20 years, with approximately 9000 articles retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database alone. In order to identify future research hotspots and potential paths in a thorough and scientifically reliable manner, it is important to organize and visualize the research on this topic from a holistic and very general perspective. This study used bibliometric analysis with CiteSpace and VOSviewer software to provide a quantitative analysis, hotspot mining, and commentary of articles published in the field of liver fibrosis over the last 20 years. This bibliometric analysis contains a total of 8994 articles with 45667 authors from 6872 institutions in 97 countries, published in 1371 journals and citing 156 309 references. The literature volume has steadily increased over the last 20 years. Research has focused on gastroenterology and hepatology, pharmacology and pharmacy, and medicine, research, and experimental areas. We found that the pathological mechanisms, diagnostic and quantitative methods, etiology, and antifibrotic strategies constitute the knowledge structure of liver fibrosis. Finding mechanisms for liver fibrosis regression, identifying precise noninvasive diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers, and creating efficient liver fibrosis patient treatments are the main goals of current research.

The Correlation between Altmetric Attention Score and Traditional Bibliometrics in Top Nursing Journal Articles

Background

Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) is a quantitative measurement of the online impact of research and has a potential correlation with traditional bibliometrics. However, the correlation for nursing journal articles is still unknown. The objective of the study was to analyze the correlation between AAS and traditional bibliometrics in the top nursing journal articles.

Materials and Methods

Articles published in top nursing journals (the journals with the top 20 5-year impact factors) from 2010 to 2019 were included. The correlations between AAS and citations, AAS and Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) score, AAS and Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) value, and AAS and impact factors were analyzed. Statistical analyses were performed using Stata 25.0 software.

Results

A total of 15,212 journal articles were included in the study. Very weak correlations were found between AASs and citations [0.124 (95% CI, 0.108-0.14)], AASs and RCRs [0.26 (95% CI, 0.244-0.275)], and AASs and CNCIs [0.207 (95% CI, 0.192-0.223)]. The weak correlations were also found between AASs and impact factors in several journals. The weak correlations between AASs and citations, AASs and CNCIs, and AASs and RCRs were also found for most journals based on subgroup analysis.

Conclusions

There is very weak correlations between AASs and traditional bibliometrics in top nursing journal articles. More studies should be conducted to assess how AAS influence bibliometrics, and how they can help manage nursing journal articles and research.