The Worldwide Influence of Social Media on Cervical Spine Literature

Abstract

Background: The Altmetric (Digital Science, Holtzbrinck Publishing) Attention Score (AAS) is an automatically calculated score that accounts for other literary influences, which include academic sources as well as nonacademically focused social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, and news articles. This study compares the most popular cervical surgery articles on social media to the most cited articles within peer-reviewed literature and identifies journals that contribute the most articles and geographic trends.Methods: We searched the Altmetric database for cervical spine surgery articles since inception using the search phrase "cervical" and "spine." We ranked journals that contributed the most articles and calculated their AAS, contributing social media outlets (eg, Twitter, Facebook, News, etc) and citation counts. We also ranked the top 100 most popular cervical spine articles on social media and compared them to the most cited articles. Countries were assessed based on their mentions through the most contributing social media platform.Results: Of the 527 total journals identified in our search, the top 10 journals were responsible for contributing 60.2% of the total articles. The 3 journals that contributed the most articles were Spine (18.9%),

Subject matter predicts where top pediatric spine articles are shared: citations vs. social media

“…From the 4676 online mentions accrued for the top Altmetric articles, 4049 (87%) came from Twitter. Other articles have also found Twitter to be responsible for the majority of online mentions [15,17], suggesting it to be the predominant mode of research dissemination online.…”

“…Multiple studies have already used the Altmetric score to investigate the online impact of articles [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. When comparing the top 100 spine surgery articles according to citation rate and Altmetric score, Parrish et al found that there was only a 2% overlap between these two article lists, suggesting that highly cited articles don't necessarily receive a similar level of online attention, and vice versa [15].…”

“…Multiple studies have already used the Altmetric score to investigate the online impact of articles [9–17]. When comparing the top 100 spine surgery articles according to citation rate and Altmetric score, Parrish et al .…”

Evaluating Funding for Authors Achieving High Citations vs. Online Popularity

“…Existing reports have compared lists of top articles when organized by number of citations and Altmetric scores. [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] When done for the top overall spine and cervical spine literature, only 2% and 8% of the articles overlapped, respectively, suggesting that there are differences between articles that receive substantial citations versus online popularity. 5,6 Academic influence, measured by classical bibliometrics, may be related to the amount of industry payments that orthopaedic surgeons receive, [14][15][16] but it is unclear whether a similar relationship exists for authors with greater online influence.…”

“…Existing reports have compared lists of top articles when organized by number of citations and Altmetric scores. 5-13 When done for the top overall spine and cervical spine literature, only 2% and 8% of the articles overlapped, respectively, suggesting that there are differences between articles that receive substantial citations versus online popularity. 5,6…”