An altmetric study: Social attention based evaluation of top-100 publications about the COVID-19 pandemic from notification of the first case to the 6th month
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Refik Saydam National Public Health Agency (RSNPHA)
Access Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Abstract
Objective: Altmetrics, or alternative-metrics, have recently emerged as a web-based metrics measuring the impact of an individual article in social media accounts with an emphasis on the public attention/engagement with the research output. Aim of this study is to perform mid-2020 altmetric analysis of top-100 articles about COVID-19 that provoked the most online attention. Methods: Altmetric Explorer search was performed in June 3th,2020. After ranked by altmetric attention score (AAS: an automatically calculated weighted count of all of the attention a research output has received in social media), articles that are not related by COVID-19 were excluded and the first-100 COVID-19-related articles were analyzed. Variables evaluated were (I) AAS, (II) dimensions-badge (interactive visualizations that showcase the citation data origins for individual publications), (III) month of publication, (IV) distribution of web-sources, (V) demographic-breakdown type distributions of citations, (VI) geographic-breakdown type distributions of citations, (VII) level-of-evidence (decided using SIGN-Criteria) (VIII) Q-categories of scientific journals, and (IX) h-index. Descriptive and correlational statistics were performed. Kruskal-Wallis test was used for AAS and dimensions-badge value comparisons while post-hoc analyses were performed by Dunn test. Spearman correlation coefficients were calculated to detect linear relationship between numerical variables. Analyses were performed by SPSS23.0 and p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Most (74%) of the disseminated articles were published in Q1-journals while evidence levels were mostly level-3/level-4. Content of the first 3 articles was about the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions, origin of COVID-19 and chloroquine usage, respectively. There was no significant difference between AAS in different months (p=0.673) but dimensions-badges in January were significantly higher (p<0.05). There was a weak positive correlation between AAS and dimensionsbadge (r=0.250; p=0.017). Conclusion: Dimensions-badge and AAS results revealed that academia discussed COVID-19 much more in the first-month of pandemic, but then interests continued parallelly in academia and other social media platforms, including public. Academicians have discussed experiences of large-patient series but public preferred what is potentially protective or risky for them. Although enormously fast accumulation and dissemination of new scientific publications were witnessed, it seems sens-clinique rather than strict evidence-based-advice transferred to journals. Because infodemic is another emerging problem, every scientist should be ethically more responsible about the publication they choose to disseminate. Interpretations/public-messages of scientists might also be critical, given the fact that only 15% of discussed Covid-19 articles was in level-1/level-2 evidence © 2021,Turk Hijyen ve Deneysel Biyoloji Dergisi.All Rights Reserved
Description
Keywords
Altmetrics, Covid-19, Electronic platforms, Infodemic, Level-of-evidence, Public health, Social attention, Web-based metrics
Journal or Series
Turk Hijyen ve Deneysel Biyoloji Dergisi
WoS Q Value
Scopus Q Value
Q4
Volume
78
Issue
4
