The Altmetric era in eating disorder research: Assessing the association between Altmetric scores and citation scores for articles in the International Journal of Eating Disorders

Abstract

Objective: The dissemination and uptake of scientific findings is of critical importance. While broader research suggests that an article's Altmetric score may predict subsequent citation scores for scientific manuscripts, the potential relationship between online dissemination and the broader scientific uptake of findings has not been explored in eating disorder research. Method: We identified 310 manuscripts published between 2017 and 2018 in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, and assessed (a) Altmetric scores, (b) the composition of Altmetric scores (i.e., Facebook posts, Twitter posts), and (c) overall citation scores. Results: Higher Altmetric scores were associated with higher citation scores. Multivariate analysis of separate Altmetric components indicated a higher number of Facebook mentions was uniquely associated with higher citation scores. Discussion: Altmetric scores may offer a viable and relatively rapid metric of the likely uptake and impact of manuscripts. Ultimately, these findings represent preliminary evidence of the benefits of widespread dissemination of eating disorder research beyond traditional academic methods. Future research should focus on expanding our preliminary findings to include a larger examination of articles to show evidence for or against the relationship between higher Altmetric scores and higher citation scores.

Characteristics analysis and evaluation of discourse leading for academic journals: perspectives from multiple integration of altmetrics indicators and evaluation methods

“…The cause of this phenomenon may be that the audiences (general public, researchers, scientists and managers, etc.) tend to focus on research areas that are closely related to life, and such research results can quickly attract the audience's attention for a short time, then, guide them to conduct thumb up, forward, comment and other behaviors through academic and social media platforms (Campbell et al, 2016;Karimipour et al, 2020;Li et al, 2021). For example, using social platforms can be helpful for the distribution of COVID-19 information to the general public and health professionals (Tornberg et al, 2021).…”

“…tend to focus on research areas that are closely related to life, and such research results can quickly attract the audience's attention for a short time, then, guide them to conduct thumb up, forward, comment and other behaviors through academic and social media platforms (Campbell et al. , 2016; Karimipour et al. , 2020; Li et al.…”

“…Furthermore, the correlation coefficients among journals discourse leading indicators (altmetrics) are relatively high. This may be because a chain reaction exists among various behaviors of users on social platforms, their interactive behaviors on one social platform will affect and trigger behaviors such as commenting, forwarding and sharing on other platforms (Campbell et al, 2016;Li and Hao, 2019;Karimipour et al, 2020).…”