The online attention to certain nuclear medicine topics: An altmetrics study vs. a citation analysis

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Medical library and Information Science, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr, Iran

2 Department of Molecular Imaging and Radionuclide Therapy, The Persian Gulf Nuclear Medicine Research Center, Bushehr Medical University Hospital, School of Medicine, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr, Iran

Abstract

Introduction: Traditional citation analysis has been greatly criticized because the process of citation accumulation requires considerable time after publication. So, the term “altmetrics” was proposed in 2010 to measure the scientific and social impact of a paper.We performed a search for certain nuclear medicine topics using the altmetrics approach to report the correlation between the altmetrics index and the number of citations.
Methods: In this descriptive-analytical study, we retrieved the articles entitled with a few nuclear medicine keywords that published from 2010 to 2019 in the Web of Science (WoS). The number of 730 original papers included in this study. Altmetrics data were derived via an altmetrics bookmarklet. Statistical analysis was performed to measure the correlation between the altmetrics score and the citation count of nuclear medicine papers.
Results: Mendeley and Twitter had the highest score of attention on social media platforms. Demographic information revealed that the most number of tweets and Mendeley's attention in nuclear medicine belonged to the United States (US). Moreover, researchers had the highest rate of shares in Mendeley. The correlation between the altmetrics score and citation index was significant (p <0.05).
Conclusion: The authors have to pay more attention to social activities on the web for wide dissemination and proper evaluation of their scientific publications.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

  1. Willinsky J, Principle A. The Access principle: The case for open access to research and scholarship. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2006.
  2. Eyre-Walker A, Stoletzki N. The assessment of science: the relative merits of post-publication review, the impact factor, and the number of citations. PLoS Biol. 2013;11:e1001675.
  3. Trueger NS, Thoma B, Hsu CH, Sullivan D, Peters L, Lin M. The altmetric score: a new measure for article-level dissemination and impact. Ann Emerg Med. 2015 Nov;66(5):549-53.
  4. Citrome L. Moving forward with article level metrics: introducing altmetrics. Int J Clin Pract. 2015; 69:811-21.
  5. Priem J, Groth P, Taraborelli D. The altmetrics collection. PLoS One. 2012; 7(11):e48753.
  6. Konkiel S. Altmetrics: A 21st century solution to determining research quality. Online Searcher 2013;37(4).
  7. Baek S, Yoon DY, Lim KJ, Hong JH, Moon JY, Seo YL, Yun EJ. Top-cited articles versus top Altmetric articles in nuclear medicine: a comparative bibliometric analysis. Acta Radiol. 2020 Oct;61(10):1343-1349.
  8. Kim ES, Yoon DY, Kim HJ, Lee K, Kim Y, Bae JS, Lee JH. The most mentioned neuroimaging articles in online media: a bibliometric analysis of the top 100 articles with the highest Altmetric Attention Scores. Acta Radiol. 2019 Dec;60(12):1680-1686.
  9. Eysenbach G. Can tweets predict citations? Metrics of social impact based on Twitter and correlation with traditional metrics of scientific impact. JMIR Bioinform Biotech. 2011;13:e12.
  10. Kelly JC, Glynn RW, O’Briain DE, Felle P, McCabe JP. The 100 classic papers of orthopaedic surgery: a bibliometric analysis. J Bone Joint Surg Br.2010 Oct;92(10):1338-43.
  11. Yoon DY, Yun EJ, Ku YJ, Baek S, Lim KJ, Seo YL, Yie M. Citation classics in radiology journals: the 100 top-cited articles, 1945–2012. AJR Am J Roentgenol. 2013 Sep;201(3):471-81.
  12. Delli K, Livas C, Spijkervet FK, Vissink A. Measuring the social impact of dental research: An insight into the most influential articles on the Web. Oral Dis. 2017 Nov;23(8):1155-1161.
  13. Syamili C, Rekha RV. Do altmetric correlate with citation?: A study based on PLOS ONE journal. COLLNET J Scientometr Inform Manag. 2017;11:103-17.
  14. Haustein S, Larivière V, Thelwall M, Amyot D, Peters I. Tweets vs. Mendeley readers: How do these two social media metrics differ? Inform Technol. 2014;56(5):207-215.
  15. Thelwall M. Early Mendeley readers correlate with later citation counts. Scientometrics. 2018;115:1231-40.
  16. Waltman L, Costas R. F1000 Recommendations as a potential new data source for research evaluation: A comparison with citations. J Assoc Inf Sci Technol. 2014;65:433-45.
  17. Thelwall M, Haustein S, Larivière V, Sugimoto CR. Do altmetrics work? Twitter and ten other social web services. PLoS One. 2013; 8:e64841.
  18. Maggio LA, Leroux TC, Meyer HS, Artino Jr AR. MedEd: exploring the relationship between altmetrics and traditional measures of dissemination in health professions education. Perspect Med Educ. 2018 Aug;7(4):239-247.

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics