Social media engagement of supportive care publications in oncology

• Published in: Journal of cancer policy 2024-09, Vol.41, p.100491, Article 100491
• Main Authors: Ranganathan, Sruthi, Benjamin, David J., Haslam, Alyson, Prasad, Vinay
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bibliometrics; Cross-Sectional Studies; Humans; Medical Oncology; Neoplasms - therapy; Periodicals as Topic - statistics & numerical data; Social Media; Supportive care
• ISSN: 2213-5383; 2213-5383
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jcpo.2024.100491

There is an increasing number of cancer ‘survivors’ and increasing research into supportive care. However, it is unknown how patterns of attention and citation differ between supportive and non-supportive cancer care research. We sought to estimate the engagement of high-impact studies of supportive compared to non-supportive cancer care papers. In a cross-sectional review of top oncology journals (2016–2023), we reviewed studies examining supportive care strategies and a frequency-matched random sampling of studies on non-supportive interventions. We compared data on social engagement metrics, as represented by Altmetric scores and citations and funding status, by supportive care or non-supportive care articles. We found overall Altmetric scores were no different between articles that did not test supportive care and those that did, with a numerically higher score for supportive care articles (86.0 vs 102; p=0.416). Other bibliometric statistics (such as the number of blogs, number of X users, and the number of X posts) obtained from Altmetric did not differ significantly between the two groups. Non-supportive cancer care papers had a significantly higher number of citations than supportive cancer care papers (45.6 in supportive care vs 141 in non-supportive care papers; p