The Impact of Social Media on Otolaryngology Literature: Analyzing the Correlation Between Altmetrics and Citation Count

Objective. The altmetric attention score (AAS) is an alternative metric that tracks article sharing via online platforms, reflecting an article's online attention trend. The objective of this study was to analyze the impact of social media on Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (OHNS) literature and analyze the correlation between AAS and citation count. Study Design and Setting. A retrospective review of otolaryngology journal article citation data and Altmetric attention score. Methods. The top 10 OHNS journals with highest impact factors were identified using the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). The number of citations in 2018 and 2019 were extracted from JCR and AAS was extracted from the altmetrics website. The primary outcome of this study was to establish whether a correlation between AAS and citation count exists, and whether AAS could serve as a valid alternative metric to assess the quality of individual articles. Results. By analyzing data from 3729 articles, a weak statistically significant positive correlation was identified between AAS and citation count (r = 0.18, P < .001), and between number of citations and Twitter activity (r = 0.18, P < .001). In addition, a statistically significant strong correlation was seen between Twitter activity and AAS (r = 0.79, P < .001). Conclusion. The current results clearly illustrate a weak correlation between AAS and citations and between Twitter activity and citations. Due to various limitations, the use of AAS should be limited to serve as a complementary metric to the current gold standard rather than an alternative metric.