National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Digestive Disease Branch, Bethesda, MD, United States.
Urologic Oncology Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2021 Jun 17;23(6):e26956. doi: 10.2196/26956.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of rapid dissemination of scientific and medical discoveries. Current platforms available for the distribution of scientific and clinical research data and information include preprint repositories and traditional peer-reviewed journals. In recent times, social media has emerged as a helpful platform to share scientific and medical discoveries.
This study aimed to comparatively analyze activity on social media (specifically, Twitter) and that related to publications in the form of preprint and peer-reviewed journal articles in the context of COVID-19 and gastroenterology during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19-related data from Twitter (tweets and user data) and articles published in preprint servers (bioRxiv and medRxiv) as well as in the PubMed database were collected and analyzed during the first 6 months of the pandemic, from December 2019 through May 2020. Global and regional geographic and gastrointestinal organ-specific social media trends were compared to preprint and publication activity. Any relationship between Twitter activity and preprint articles published and that between Twitter activity and PubMed articles published overall, by organ system, and by geographic location were identified using Spearman's rank-order correlation.
Over the 6-month period, 73,079 tweets from 44,609 users, 7164 journal publications, and 4702 preprint publications were retrieved. Twitter activity (ie, number of tweets) peaked in March 2020, whereas preprint and publication activity (ie, number of articles published) peaked in April 2020. Overall, strong correlations were identified between trends in Twitter activity and preprint and publication activity (P<.001 for both). COVID-19 data across the three platforms mainly concentrated on pulmonology or critical care, but when analyzing the field of gastroenterology specifically, most tweets pertained to pancreatology, most publications focused on hepatology, and most preprints covered hepatology and luminal gastroenterology. Furthermore, there were significant positive associations between trends in Twitter and publication activity for all gastroenterology topics (luminal gastroenterology: P=.009; hepatology and inflammatory bowel disease: P=.006; gastrointestinal endoscopy: P=.007), except pancreatology (P=.20), suggesting that Twitter activity did not correlate with publication activity for this topic. Finally, Twitter activity was the highest in the United States (7331 tweets), whereas PubMed activity was the highest in China (1768 publications).
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the potential of social media as a vehicle for disseminating scientific information during a public health crisis. Sharing and spreading information on COVID-19 in a timely manner during the pandemic has been paramount; this was achieved at a much faster pace on social media, particularly on Twitter. Future investigation could demonstrate how social media can be used to augment and promote scholarly activity, especially as the world begins to increasingly rely on digital or virtual platforms. Scientists and clinicians should consider the use of social media in augmenting public awareness regarding their scholarly pursuits.
新冠疫情凸显了快速传播科学和医学发现的重要性。目前可用于分发科学和临床研究数据和信息的平台包括预印本存储库和传统同行评议期刊。最近，社交媒体已成为分享科学和医学发现的有用平台。
本研究旨在比较分析新冠疫情期间社交媒体（特别是 Twitter）上的活动与预印本和同行评议期刊文章形式的发表活动，以及新冠疫情早期的胃肠病学相关活动。
从 2019 年 12 月至 2020 年 5 月，即新冠疫情的前 6 个月，收集并分析了来自 Twitter（推文和用户数据）、预印本服务器（bioRxiv 和 medRxiv）以及 PubMed 数据库的与新冠病毒相关的数据。比较了全球和区域地理以及胃肠道特定器官的社交媒体趋势与预印本和出版活动。使用 Spearman 秩相关分析确定了 Twitter 活动与预印本文章发表之间以及 Twitter 活动与 PubMed 文章发表之间的任何关系，包括按器官系统和地理位置进行的总体、按器官系统和地理位置进行的分析。
在 6 个月期间，共检索到来自 44609 名用户的 73079 条推文、7164 篇期刊出版物和 4702 篇预印本出版物。Twitter 活动（即推文数量）在 2020 年 3 月达到峰值，而预印本和出版活动（即发表的文章数量）在 2020 年 4 月达到峰值。总体而言，Twitter 活动趋势与预印本和出版活动之间存在很强的相关性（两者均 P<.001）。这三个平台上的新冠病毒数据主要集中在肺病学或重症监护领域，但在专门分析胃肠病学领域时，大多数推文与胰腺炎有关，大多数出版物侧重于肝病学，大多数预印本涵盖肝病学和腔肠胃肠病学。此外，Twitter 趋势与所有胃肠病学主题的出版活动之间存在显著的正相关关系（腔肠胃肠病学：P=.009；肝病学和炎症性肠病：P=.006；胃肠内镜：P=.007），除了胰腺炎（P=.20），这表明 Twitter 活动与该主题的出版活动没有相关性。最后，Twitter 在美国的活动量最高（7331 条推文），而 PubMed 的活动量在中国最高（1768 篇出版物）。
新冠疫情凸显了社交媒体作为在公共卫生危机期间传播科学信息的工具的潜力。在大流行期间及时分享和传播新冠病毒相关信息至关重要；这在社交媒体上，尤其是在 Twitter 上，实现的速度要快得多。未来的研究可以证明社交媒体如何用于增强和促进学术活动，尤其是随着世界开始越来越依赖数字或虚拟平台。科学家和临床医生应该考虑在增强公众对其学术追求的认识方面使用社交媒体。
