Altmetric Attention Score: Evaluating the Social Media Impact of Burn Research

Abstract

Traditional measures of scholarly impact (ie, impact factor, citation rate) do not account for the role of social media in knowledge dissemination. The Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) tracks the online sharing activity of articles on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. All 285 original scientific articles published in Journal of Burn Care & Research and Burns from January to December 2017 were obtained from official journal websites. Article characteristics extracted include AAS; number of Twitter, Facebook, and news outlet mentions; subject of study and study design; number of citations; number of authors and academic institutions; and others. The average AAS for all articles was 6.1 (SD: 48; range: 0 to 611) in which 156 (55%) of those had Twitter mentions. The mean AAS for Journal of Burn Care & Research and Burns were 7.7 (SD: 54; range: 0 to 536) and 5.3 (SD: 45; range: 0 to 611), respectively. There was a weak, positive correlation between AAS and citation count for all articles (ρ = 0.12; P = .049), and this finding was consistent for Journal of Burn Care & Research (ρ = 0.21; P = .039) and Burns (ρ = 0.15; P = .038) individually. The weak correlation between the two metrics supports that AAS and citation count capture the attention of different audiences. In addition, studies discussing skin grafting were associated with higher average AAS (β: 29 [95% CI: 4.2 to 54]; P = .022). Overall, our findings support using both AAS and traditional bibliometrics to assess article impact.