Examining the Relationship between Altmetric Score and Traditional Bibliometrics in the Ophthalmology Literature for 2013 and 2016 Cohorts

• Published in: Journal of academic ophthalmology (2017) 2021-01, Vol.13 (1), p.e89-e95
• Main Authors: Wiley, Zachary C, Boyd, Carter J, Ananthasekar, Shivani, Bhat, Nita, Harish Bindiganavile, Shruthi, Lee, Andrew G
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: altmetric; citations; ophthalmology; social media; twitter
• ISSN: 2475-4757; 2475-4757
• DOI: 10.1055/s-0041-1728658

In this study, we reviewed a select sample of ophthalmology literature to determine if there was a correlation between Altimetric and traditional citation-based and impact factor metrics. We hypothesized that Altmetric score would more closely correlate with impact factor and citations in 2016.   for the year 2013 was used to find the 15 highest impact factor ophthalmology journals in 2013. Then Elsevier's Scopus was used to identify the 10 most cited articles from each journal for the years 2013 and 2016. Metrics for all identified articles were collected using the Altmetric Bookmarklet, and date of Twitter account creation was noted for journals with such an account. Altmetric scores, impact factor, and citation counts were tabulated for each article. Pearson's correlation coefficient ( ) determined correlation of independent variables (number of citations or impact factor) with dependent variable (Altmetric score). For our Twitter analysis, account age was the independent variable and calculated correlation coefficients ( ) were the dependent variable. Proportion of variance was determined with a coefficient of determination ( ).  This study included 300 articles, evenly split between 2013 and 2016. Within the 2013 cohort, three journals had significant positive correlations between citation count and Altmetric score. For the 2016 cohort, both Altmetric score and citation count (  = 0.583,