Sao Paulo Headache Center, Albert Einstein Hospital, Institute of Psychiatry - HCFMUSP in São Paulo, Brazil.
Neurology Clinic, Tartu University, Tartu, Estonia.
Cephalalgia. 2022 Nov;42(13):1317-1322. doi: 10.1177/03331024221107385. Epub 2022 Jun 14.
Alternative metrics to traditional, citation-based metrics are increasingly being used. These are complementary to traditional metrics, like downloads and citations, and give information on how often a given journal article is discussed and used in professional (reference managers) and social networks, such as mainstream media and Twitter. Altmetrics is used in most journals and is available in all indexed headache medicine journals. Whether Altmetrics have an input on traditional, citation-based metrics or whether it is a stand-alone metric system is not clear. Actively promoting a paper through media channels will probably increase the Altmetric score but the question arises whether this will also increase citations and downloads of this individual paper.
Focusing on this point we performed a randomized study in order to test the hypothesis that a promotion intervention would improve citations and other science metric scores. We selected 48 papers published in from July 2019 to January 2020 and randomized them to either receive an active promotion through social media channels or not. The primary outcome used was the difference between mean article citations versus intervention 12 months after the intervention period.
The results show that the alternative metrics significantly increased for those papers randomly selected to receive an intervention compared to those who did not. This effect was observed in the first 12 months, right after the boosting strategy was performed. The higher promoted paper diffusion in social media lead to a significantly higher number of citations and downloads.
Further promotion strategies should be studied in order to tailor the best cost-benefit intervention.
替代传统的引文计量指标的指标越来越多地被使用。这些指标与下载量和引文等传统指标相辅相成，提供了关于给定期刊文章在专业（参考管理器）和主流媒体和 Twitter 等社交网络中讨论和使用频率的信息。Altmetrics 在大多数期刊中使用，并且在所有索引的头痛医学期刊中都可用。不清楚 Altmetrics 是否对传统的引文计量指标有影响，或者它是否是一个独立的指标系统。通过媒体渠道积极宣传一篇论文可能会提高 Altmetric 分数，但问题是这是否会增加该论文的引文和下载量。
为了检验通过媒体渠道进行宣传干预是否会提高引文和其他科学计量指标分数的假设，我们进行了一项随机研究。我们选择了 2019 年 7 月至 2020 年 1 月期间发表在 杂志上的 48 篇论文，并将它们随机分为接受社交媒体渠道的主动宣传或不接受。使用的主要结果是干预后 12 个月内平均文章引文与干预之间的差异。
结果表明，与未接受干预的论文相比，随机选择接受干预的论文的替代计量指标显著增加。这种效应在干预后的前 12 个月内就观察到了。在社交媒体中对高推广论文的扩散导致了更高的引文和下载量。
应该研究进一步的推广策略，以制定最佳的成本效益干预措施。
