Analyzing the relationship between Altmetric score and literature citations in the Implantology literature

Background The influence of research has long been studied using citations and impact factors (IFs). Electronic media is changing how people interact with the scientific literature. There are few investigations into these trends. Purpose To explore whether Altmetrics correlate with traditional bibliometrics in the Implantology literature. Materials and Methods Five Implantology journals with the highest IF and the 10 most highly-cited articles within those journals from 2013 to 2016 were reviewed. Altmetric score, citation count, and media "mentions" were recorded. Comparisons were conducted between Altmetric score, citations, and IF by performing Pearson correlation coefficients and descriptive statistics. Twitter accounts were studied and compared to other metrics. Results Analysis revealed no correlation between citations and Altmetrics (r = .096,P = .506) or IF and Altmetrics (r = .111,P = .443) in 2013. Altmetrics were also not significantly correlated with citations (r = 0.148,P = .305) or IF (r = .145,P = .315) in 2016. Total Altmetric scores were nine times higher in 2016 compared to 2013, with news outlets and Twitter seeing large increases in mentions. Twitter was the top medium receiving mentions across the two cohorts. Conclusions Compared to other fields, Implantology articles received lower Altmetric scores, noting an area of improvement. Altmetrics at this time are insufficient to replace traditional bibliometrics, but may provide helpful real-time information concerning article dissemination.