Amath Aysah, Ambacher Kristin, Leddy John J, Wood Timothy J, Ramnanan Christopher J
Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Faculty of Medicine, Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Med Educ. 2017 Sep;51(9):935-941. doi: 10.1111/medu.13359. Epub 2017 Jul 18.
The impact of academic scholarship has traditionally been measured using citation-based metrics. However, citations may not be the only measure of impact. In recent years, other platforms (e.g. Twitter) have provided new tools for promoting scholarship to both academic and non-academic audiences. Alternative metrics (altmetrics) can capture non-traditional dissemination data such as attention generated on social media platforms.
The aims of this exploratory study were to characterise the relationships among altmetrics, access counts and citations in an international and pre-eminent medical education journal, and to clarify the roles of these metrics in assessing the impact of medical education academic scholarship.
A database study was performed (September 2015) for all papers published in Medical Education in 2012 (n = 236) and 2013 (n = 246). Citation, altmetric and access (HTML views and PDF downloads) data were obtained from Scopus, the Altmetric Bookmarklet tool and the journal Medical Education, respectively. Pearson coefficients (r-values) between metrics of interest were then determined.
Twitter and Mendeley (an academic bibliography tool) were the only altmetric-tracked platforms frequently (> 50%) utilised in the dissemination of articles. Altmetric scores (composite measures of all online attention) were driven by Twitter mentions. For short and full-length articles in 2012 and 2013, both access counts and citation counts were most strongly correlated with one another, as well as with Mendeley downloads. By comparison, Twitter metrics and altmetric scores demonstrated weak to moderate correlations with both access and citation counts.
Whereas most altmetrics showed limited correlations with readership (access counts) and impact (citations), Mendeley downloads correlated strongly with both readership and impact indices for articles published in the journal Medical Education and may therefore have potential use that is complementary to that of citations in assessment of the impact of medical education scholarship.
传统上，学术成果的影响力是通过基于引用的指标来衡量的。然而，引用可能并非衡量影响力的唯一标准。近年来，其他平台（如推特）为向学术和非学术受众推广学术成果提供了新工具。替代指标（altmetrics）可以获取非传统的传播数据，如在社交媒体平台上产生的关注度。
本探索性研究的目的是描述一份国际知名医学教育期刊中替代指标、访问量和引用之间的关系，并阐明这些指标在评估医学教育学术成果影响力方面的作用。
对2012年（n = 236）和2013年（n = 246）发表在《医学教育》上的所有论文进行了数据库研究（2015年9月）。引用、替代指标和访问量（HTML浏览量和PDF下载量）数据分别从Scopus、替代指标书签工具和《医学教育》期刊获取。然后确定感兴趣指标之间的皮尔逊系数（r值）。
推特和Mendeley（一个学术文献管理工具）是在文章传播中被频繁使用（> 50%）的仅有的替代指标跟踪平台。替代指标得分（所有在线关注度的综合衡量）由推特提及驱动。对于2012年和2013年的短篇和长篇文章，访问量和引用量彼此之间以及与Mendeley下载量的相关性最强。相比之下，推特指标和替代指标得分与访问量和引用量的相关性较弱至中等。
虽然大多数替代指标与读者数量（访问量）和影响力（引用量）的相关性有限，但Mendeley下载量与《医学教育》期刊上发表文章的读者数量和影响力指标都密切相关，因此在评估医学教育学术成果的影响力方面可能具有与引用互补的潜在用途。
