|
|
ORIGINAL ARTICLE |
|
Year : 2019 | Volume
: 10
| Issue : 1 | Page : 112 |
|
Altmetric analysis of contemporary Iranian Medical Journals
Jafar Kolahi1, Saber Khazaei2, Elham Bidram3, Roya Kelishadi4
1 Independent Research Scientist, Founder and Associate Editor of Dental Hypotheses, Isfahan, Iran 2 Department of Endodontics and Dental Research Center, School of Dentistry, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran 3 Faculty of Advanced Sciences and Technologies, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran 4 Department of Pediatrics, Child Growth and Development Research Center, Research Institute for Primordial Prevention of Non-Communicable Disease, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran
Date of Submission | 15-Mar-2019 |
Date of Acceptance | 11-Apr-2019 |
Date of Web Publication | 12-Jun-2019 |
Correspondence Address: Jafar Kolahi Independent Research Scientist, Founder and Associate Editor of Dental Hypotheses, No. 24, Faree 15, Pardis, Shahin Shahr, Isfahan 83179-18981 Iran
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/ijpvm.IJPVM_134_19
Background: Altmetrics is a newly emerging scholarly tool measuring online attention surrounding scientific research outputs. With respect to increasing demand of disseminating research findings on the World Wide Web, this study aims to analyze the altmetric statues of Iranian medical journals. Methods: On February 27, 2019, the list of Iranian medical journals extracted from http://journals.research.ac.ir/ and consequently altmetric data token out from Altmetric database (Altmetric LLP, London, UK). The science mapping done via keyword co-occurrence, co-citation and co-authorship, network analysis using the VOSviewer. The Pearson coefficient was then employed for the correlation analysis using R. Results: Among a total of 104 journals, 7518 articles were mentioned in Altmetric data resources (Mean: 72.28, Confidence Level (95.0%): 16.8), total mentions were 27577 (Mean: 265.16, Confidence Level (95.0%): 79.9). Considering the total mentions of articles, International Journal of Preventive Medicine achieved the first rank, followed by Journal of Research in Medical Sciences and Iranian Journal of Public Health. Notably, Twitter was the most popular altmetric resource followed by Facebook and news outlets. Tweets were generally from the United States and United Kingdom. Among top 5% popular Iranian medical articles multiple sclerosis, cancer, and anxiety was hot topics. Conclusions: Iranian biomedical journal editors and research scientists needs to be more dynamic in World Wide Web using social media, post-publication peer review tools, Stack Exchange (Q and A) sites, research highlight tools, Wikipedia, and etc. In spite, more attention to the concept of evidence-based policymaking, by Iranian government along with the health policymakers seems necessary.
Keywords: Altmetrics, Facebook, Iran, medical journal, social media, Twitter
How to cite this article: Kolahi J, Khazaei S, Bidram E, Kelishadi R. Altmetric analysis of contemporary Iranian Medical Journals. Int J Prev Med 2019;10:112 |
Introduction | |  |
Impact factor or h-index are the famous traditional citation-based metrics for the research scientists. However, altmetrics is a newly emerging scholarly tool, acts as a compliment to traditional citation-based bibliometrics, measuring online attention surrounding scientific research outputs.[1],[2],[3] Different data resources for altmetrics includes Twitter, Facebook, scientific blogs, news outlets, Google+, policy documents, post-publication peer reviews, F1000 prime, Wikipedia, Weibo, Reddit, Pinterest, patents, Video (e.g. YouTube), sites running Stack Exchange (Q and A) and others.[4] In contrast with slowly-progressive traditional citation-based metrics, altmetrics acts very fast, in which the majority of altmetric resources up-dated on a daily basis. In contrast, less than 50% of articles were cited before 3 years after publication.[5]
Among general and internal medical journals, the number of Twitter followers is strongly associated with impact factor and number of citations.[6] The number of Twitter mentions potentially forecast the highly cited articles, within the first 3 days of their publication.[7]
Of more interest, well-known medical research funders and charities, e.g. the Welcome Trust, attracted to altmetrics creating greater public engagement toward the research.[8] The altmetric status of neurosurgery journals,[9] radiology journals,[10] dental journals,[11],[12],[13],[14],[15] emergency medicine,[16] etc., has previously been analyzed.
Nevertheless, Iran experienced a great development in knowledge creation during the last decade.[17],[18],[19],[20] Polynomial trendline analysis of PubMed search results with the term of “Iran[Affiliation]” revealed the fast growing of the number of Iranian articles (y = 41.625x2-166263x + 2E + 08, R2 = 0.9632).
Hence, with respect to increasing demand of disseminating research findings on the World Wide Web among the scientist, this study aims to analyze the altmetric statues of Iranian medical journals.
Methods | |  |
On February 27, 2019, a list of Iranian medical journals was extracted from http://journals.research.ac.ir/, and consequently altmetric data were derived from Altmetric database (Altmetric LLP, London, U.K.). Bibliometric data of Iranian popular medical articles and journals were retrieved from PubMed and Web of Science. The science mapping via keyword co-occurrence, co-citation and co-authorship network analysis was carried out using the VOSviewer 1.6.6 (www.vosviewer.com/, Leiden University Centre for Science and Technology Studies). The Pearson coefficient was also employed for the correlation analysis using Rattle (graphical user interface for data science in R (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. http://www.R-project.org/)). Graphs were drawn by Microsoft Office Excel 2016.
Results | |  |
A total of 104 journals were found with Altmetric mentions, in which 7,518 articles were mentioned among Altmetric data resources (Mean: 72.28, Confidence Level (95.0%): 16.8), total mentions were 27577 (Mean: 265.16, Confidence Level (95.0%): 79.9) [Figure 1] and [Table 1]. Among top 5% (469 articles) popular articles, h-index was 25 and the average citations was 12.3 per item according to Web of Science. | Figure 1: Altmetric data of 104 Iranian medical journals. Please note the logarithmic scale of the left vertical axis. Box and whisker plots of data are shown on the right
Click here to view |
 | Table 1: Data-bar visualization of the top 10 Iranian medical articles with the highest Altmetric scores
Click here to view |
With respect to the total mentions of articles, International Journal of Preventive Medicine achieved the first rank, followed by Journal of Research in Medical Sciences and Iranian Journal of Public Health [Figure 2] and [Figure 3]. | Figure 2: Altmetric data of top ten Iranian medical journals with the most online attention. Bubble sizes correspond to the number of Twitter mentions
Click here to view |
 | Figure 3: Breakdown of the Altmetric data resources for top ten Iranian medical journals
Click here to view |
Twitter was the most popular altmetric resource among Iranian medical journals followed by Facebook and news outlets [Figure 4], with the most Tweets generally from the United States and United Kingdom [Table 2]. | Figure 4: Sum of scores of various Altmetric data resources among Iranian medical journals
Click here to view |
 | Table 2: Demographic breakdown of top 10 countries with the greatest number of tweets related to Iranian medical articles
Click here to view |
Among top 5% Iranian medical articles, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and anxiety listed as the most accruing keywords (hot topics) [Figure 5]. | Figure 5: Hot topics among top 5% Iranian medical articles with the highest Altmetric scores. Red–yellow–green–blue color scheme was used; red corresponds to the highest keyword co-occurrence in density, and blue corresponds to the lowest density. The distance-based approach was used to create this map, which means the smaller the distance between two terms, the higher their relatedness
Click here to view |
Co-citation network analysis illustrated American journal of clinical nutrition, Journal of nutrition and New England journal of medicine as the most affective journals on the network, considering the number of citations [Figure 6]. | Figure 6: Co-citation network analysis among citation sources of the top 5% Iranian medical articles with the highest Altmetric scores. The network involved 48 nodes and 5 clusters which showed in different colors
Click here to view |
Co-authorship network analysis displayed Askari G, Ghiasvand R and Khorvash F, had the most influence on the network considering number of articles [Figure 7]. | Figure 7: Co-authorship network analysis of the top 5% Iranian medical articles with the highest Altmetric scores. The network involved 53 nodes and 6 clusters which showed in different colors
Click here to view |
Altmetric score correlated with news mentions (r = 0.85) and did not correlate with citations (r = 0.005); yet Mendeley mentions correlated with citations (r = 0.80) [Figure 8]. | Figure 8: Correlation matrix visualization between Altmetric score, citations, Mendeley readers and the main Altmetric data resources of top 5% Iranian medical articles with the highest Altmetric scores
Click here to view |
Discussion | |  |
Number of social media users will increase to 3 billion by 2021 (http://bit.ly/2FsJVh4). Social media is a useful tool for dissemination of medical knowledge.[21] A good example would be Mayo Clinic Twitter account (@MayoClinic) with more than 1.89 million followers and 45600 tweets.[22] “Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism” published at Annals of Internal Medicine, March 2019, would be a good illustration to show the power of social media.[23] This article experience 10040 tweets from 9256 users, with an upper bound of 21,393,283 followers. Remarkably, 83% of tweets were carried out by members of the public, 8% by scientists, 7% by practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) and 2% by science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) (https://annals.altmetric.com/details/56459321).
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to analyze the altmetric status of Iranian medical journals. Tweets and Facebook posts were the most prevalent altmetric resources, mostly from the United States and the United Kingdom, indicating the international popularity of Iranian journal research outputs. Disappointingly, well-known Iranian journals are not active in Twittersphere. Alongside of legal limitations, lack of knowledge and attitude among Iranian editors, mainly influenced this trend. Previous studies indicated journals with their own Twitter page, received 34 percent more citations and 46 percent more tweets than journals without a Twitter page.[24] Interestingly, highly tweeted articles were tweeted on the day of publication by corresponding journal accounts or accounts with a high number of followers, e.g. an academic society.[25]
Unacceptably, the newly emerging scholarly tools, such as, post-publication peer review (e.g. PubPeer)[26],[27],[28] and research highlight (e.g. F1000 Prime),[29] are not popular among Iranian medical journals. Stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency, or STAP might be the good examples showing the power of post-publication peer review; In January 2014, scientist from Japan and US published two articles in the NATURE stating embryonic-like stem cells could be generate by exposing adult body cells to stress, such as acidic conditions or physical pressure. Shortly critical post-publication peer reviews however, found several problems with STAP stem-cell claims and the articles finally retracted.[30]
Iranian medical journals were rarely cited by patents, showing a gap between Iranian medical research and industry. Entrepreneurship courses, funding practical researches and development of biomedical science and technology parks will be useful tools bridging this old gap.[31],[32],[33],[34]
Iranian medical community were not active in Wikipedia and Iranian medical articles rarely cited in Wikipedia. Of more interest, only English-language medical Wikipedia articles received additional to 2.4 billion visits in 2017.[35] Currently, the English Wikipedia develops at a rate 570 new daily articles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: Statistics). Moreover, the Cochrane and Wikipedia started working together in 2016 to disseminate trusted health information on World Wide Web (http://bit.ly/2Cm0IBB). Therefore, Wikipedia could be considered as a useful tool to publicize trusted medical knowledge by Iranian medical community.[36]
Considering principles of evidence-based policymaking,[37],[38],[39] Iranian medical research findings rarely used for policymaking. These results may involve bias, due to not availability of Iran's policy documents at Altmetric database, which strongly requires the Iranian health policymakers at government and parliaments' attention.[40]
Hot topic analysis illustrated emerging and groundbreaking issues, e.g. genomic medicine, nano-technology, tissue engineering, artificial intelligence, robotic surgery non-common among Iranian medical journals, which needs more consideration.
Based on this study there was no correlation between altmetric score and citation even with high h-index among popular Iranian articles. Same result reported for original research articles, published in specific high-impact general medicine journals,[41] cardiovascular articles,[42] emergency medicine,[16] radiology,[10] etc. Yet, some studies reported significant correlation between altmetrics and citations. In a large-scale study, a significant correlation was found between six altmetric resources (tweets, Facebook wall posts, research highlights, blog mentions, mainstream media mentions and forum posts) and citation counts.[43] A recent study covering six PLOS specialized journals, revealed a significant positive correlation between the normalized altmetric scores and normalized citations.[44]
Limitations of our study should be noted. First, altmetric analysis more fluctuates over time, compared to traditional indices. Second, the frequency of journal and number of articles in journal were not adjusted. In context, altmetrics might be a useful, complementary measure to evaluate the impact of research reporting in modern medicine and publication enterprise.
As a final point, Iranian medical journal editorial teams and biomedical research scientists, must go beyond boundaries of traditional citation-based metrics being more active in World Wide Web, while paying more attention to newly emerging scholarly tools, e.g. social media, post-publication peer review tools, Stack Exchange (Q and A) sites, research highlight tools, Wikipedia.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Altmetric LLP (London, U.K), particularly Mrs. Stacy Konkiel for her valued support and permitting us complete access to Altmetric data.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
References | |  |
1. | Warren HR, Raison N, Dasgupta P. The rise of altmetrics. JAMA 2017;317:131-2. |
2. | Kolahi J. Altmetrics: A new emerging issue for dental research scientists. Dent Hypotheses 2015;6:1-2. [Full text] |
3. | Melero R. Altmetrics-a complement to conventional metrics. Biochem medica 2015;25:152-60. |
4. | Konkiel S. What can altmetrics tell us about interest in dental clinical trials? Dent Hypotheses 2017;8:31. [Full text] |
5. | Wang J. Citation time window choice for research impact evaluation. Scientometrics 2013;94:851-72. |
6. | Cosco TD. Medical journals, impact and social media: An ecological study of the Twittersphere. CMAJ 2015;187:1353-7. |
7. | Eysenbach G. Can tweets predict citations? Metrics of social impact based on twitter and correlation with traditional metrics of scientific impact. J Med Internet Res 2011;13:e123. |
8. | Dinsmore A, Allen L, Dolby K. Alternative perspectives on impact: The potential of ALMs and altmetrics to inform funders about research impact. PLoS Biol 2014;12:e1002003. |
9. | Wang J, Alotaibi NM, Ibrahim GM, Kulkarni AV, Lozano AM. The spectrum of altmetrics in neurosurgery: The top 100 “Trending” articles in neurosurgical journals. World Neurosurg 2017;103:883-895.e1. |
10. | Rosenkrantz AB, Ayoola A, Singh K, Duszak R. Alternative metrics (“Altmetrics”) for assessing article impact in popular general radiology journals. Acad Radiol 2017;24:891-7. |
11. | Kolahi J, Khazaei S. Altmetric: Top 50 dental articles in 2014. BDJ 2016;220:569-74. |
12. | Kolahi J, Iranmanesh P, Khazaei S. Altmetric analysis of 2015 dental literature: A cross sectional survey. BDJ 2017;222:695-9. |
13. | Kolahi J, Khazaei S. Altmetric analysis of contemporary dental literature. BDJ 2018;225:68-72. |
14. | Kolahi J. Facebook and contemporary dental researches. Dent Hypotheses 2017;8:85-6. [Full text] |
15. | Kolahi J. Dental research output in twittersphere. Dent Hypotheses 2017;8:1-2. [Full text] |
16. | Barbic D, Tubman M, Lam H, Barbic S. An analysis of altmetrics in emergency medicine. Acad Emerg Med 2016;23:251-68. |
17. | Kolahi J, Abrishami M. Contemporary remarkable scientific growth in Iran: House of wisdom will rise again. Dent Hypotheses 2013;4:1-3. [Full text] |
18. | Kharabaf S, Abdollahi M. Science growth in Iran over the past 35 years. J Res Med Sci 2012;17:275-9. |
19. | Akhondzadeh S. Iranian science shows world's fastest growth: Ranks 17 th in science production in 2012. Avicenna J Med Biotechnol 2013;5:139. |
20. | |
21. | Saenger AK, Berkwits M, Carley S, Haymond S, Ennis-O'Connor M, Sherbino J, et al. The power of social media in medicine and medical education: Opportunities, risks, and rewards. Clin Chem 2018;64:1284-90. |
22. | Widmer RJ, Engler NB, Geske JB, Klarich KW, Timimi FK. An academic healthcare twitter account: The mayo clinic experience. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw 2016;19:360-6. |
23. | Hviid A, Hansen JV, Frisch M, Melbye M. Measles, mumps, rubella vaccination and autism. Ann Intern Med 2019. doi: 10.7326/M18-2101. [Epub ahead of print] |
24. | Ortega JL. The presence of academic journals on twitter and its relationship with dissemination (tweets) and research impact (citations). Aslib J Inf Manag 2017;69:674-87. |
25. | Zhang L, Wang J. Why highly cited articles are not highly tweeted? A biology case. Scientometrics 2018;117:495-509. |
26. | Gibson TA. Post-publication review could aid skills and quality. Nature 2007;448:408. |
27. | Knoepfler P. Reviewing post-publication peer review. Trends Genet 2015;31:221-3. |
28. | Kolahi J, Khazaei S. Post-publication peer review: A fresh perspective on dentistry publications. Dent Hypotheses 2016;7:29-30. [Full text] |
29. | |
30. | |
31. | Kolahi J. Dental science and technology parks: Rethinking university-industry connections. Dent Hypotheses 2015;6:40-3. [Full text] |
32. | Gelijns AC, Thier SO. Medical innovation and institutional interdependence. JAMA 2002;287:72. |
33. | Thon JN, Karlsson S. How scientists can become entrepreneurs. Trends Biochem Sci 2017;42:327-9. |
34. | Manbachi A, Kreamer-Tonin K, Walch P, Gamo NJ, Khoshakhlagh P, Zhang YS, et al. Starting a medical technology venture as a young academic innovator or student entrepreneur. Ann Biomed Eng 2018;46:1-13. |
35. | Murray H. More than 2 billion pairs of eyeballs: Why aren't you sharing medical knowledge on Wikipedia? BMJ Evid Based Med 2019;24:90-91. |
36. | Kolahi J, Iranmanesh P. Wikipedia and dental literature. Dent Hypotheses 2018;9:77-9. [Full text] |
37. | Kolahi J. Evidence-based policymaking and contemporary dental researches. Dent Hypotheses 2017;8:55-6. [Full text] |
38. | Yamey G, Feachem R. Evidence-based policymaking in global health-the payoffs and pitfalls. Evid Based Med 2011;16:97-9. |
39. | |
40. | |
41. | Barakat AF, Nimri N, Shokr M, Mahtta D, Mansoor H, Masri A, et al. Correlation of altmetric attention score and citations for high-impact general medicine journals: A cross-sectional study. J Gen Intern Med 2019. doi: 10.1007/s11606-019-04838-6. [Epub ahead of print] |
42. | Barakat AF, Nimri N, Shokr M, Mahtta D, Mansoor H, Mojadidi MK, et al. Correlation of altmetric attention score with article citations in cardiovascular research. J Am Coll Cardiol 2018;72:952-3. |
43. | Thelwall M, Haustein S, Larivière V, Sugimoto CR. Do altmetrics work? Twitter and ten other social web services. PLoS One 2013;8:e64841. |
44. | Huang W, Wang P, Wu Q. A correlation comparison between altmetric attention scores and citations for six PLOS journals. PLoS One 2018;13:e0194962. |
[Figure 1], [Figure 2], [Figure 3], [Figure 4], [Figure 5], [Figure 6], [Figure 7], [Figure 8]
[Table 1], [Table 2]
This article has been cited by | 1 |
Literature search strategies in dental education |
|
| Zohaib Khurshid,Rabia Tariq,Faris Y. Asiri,Khadijah Abid,Muhammad S. Zafar | | Journal of Taibah University Medical Sciences. 2021; | | [Pubmed] | [DOI] | | 2 |
Meta-Analysis of Correlations between Altmetric Attention Score and Citations in Health Sciences |
|
| Jafar Kolahi,Saber Khazaei,Pedram Iranmanesh,Jeehyoung Kim,Heejung Bang,Abbasali Khademi,Paolo Boffano | | BioMed Research International. 2021; 2021: 1 | | [Pubmed] | [DOI] | | 3 |
Scientific Outputs on Cyberchondria: scientometric, Altmetric and Researchers’ Sciencitifc Collaboration Network Analysis |
|
| Marzieh Morovati,Nosrat Riahinia | | Journal of Health Administration. 2020; 23(3): 17 | | [Pubmed] | [DOI] | | 4 |
Using the Quadruple Helix Model for evaluation of health science researches |
|
| Shima Moradi,Firoozeh Dokhani | | Library Hi Tech. 2020; 38(4): 723 | | [Pubmed] | [DOI] | |
|
 |
 |
|