Chen Xiaoqing, Liu Li, Li Weichao, Xing Meiyuan, Li Xiuyang
Library, The First Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
Department of Big Data in Health Science, and Center for Clinical Big Data and Statistics, The Second Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
PLoS One. 2025 Aug 27;20(8):e0329773. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0329773. eCollection 2025.
Studies on the impact and attention of cover papers within open-access journals from the same publisher remain lacking. The objective of this study was to explore the effect of being featured as a cover paper on the impact and attention of papers for PLOS journals using propensity score matching (PSM).
Cover and non-cover papers published in five PLOS journals (i,e., PLOS Biology, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Pathogens, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases) between 2008 and 2017 were selected. Three scientometric indicators, citations (as scholarly impact indicator), and Altmetric attention score (AAS) and Mendeley readers (as social and academic attention indicators) of each paper were collected from altmetric.com. Two datasets were obtained via 1:2 propensity score matching: one spanning 2008-2017 for analyzing citations and reader counts, and another covering 2011-2017 for AAS analysis. Then, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, univariate analysis, and multivariate linear regression analysis were conducted to explore the impact and attention of cover papers versus non-cover papers.
Among 24,080 papers, 1,760 were successfully matched for analysis of citation frequency and readership, and 1,212 were successfully matched for Altmetric attention analysis. After PSM, cover papers exhibited significantly higher citations (v = 560, P < 0.001), much more readers (v = 528, P < 0.001), and higher AAS (v = 1384, P < 0.001) than non-cover papers. Further multivariate regression analysis of the PSM-adjusted data revealed significant associations, with regression coefficients of 0.145 for citations, 0.174 for readership, and 0.691 for AAS (P < 0.05).
The findings of this study suggested that being featured on the cover was statistically positively associated with an article's academic impact and public visibility, especially in terms of the societal attention. However, the relationship was weak.
对于来自同一出版商的开放获取期刊内封面文章的影响力和受关注程度的研究仍然匮乏。本研究的目的是使用倾向得分匹配法（PSM）探讨在PLOS期刊上作为封面文章发表对论文影响力和受关注程度的影响。
选取了2008年至2017年期间在五本PLOS期刊（即《PLOS生物学》《PLOS计算生物学》《PLOS遗传学》《PLOS病原体》《PLOS被忽视的热带病》）上发表的封面文章和非封面文章。从altmetric.com收集每篇论文的三个科学计量指标，即引文（作为学术影响力指标）、Altmetric关注度得分（AAS）和Mendeley读者量（作为社会和学术关注度指标）。通过1:2倾向得分匹配获得两个数据集：一个涵盖2008 - 2017年用于分析引文和读者数量，另一个涵盖2011 - 2017年用于AAS分析。然后，进行Wilcoxon符号秩检验、单变量分析和多变量线性回归分析，以探讨封面文章与非封面文章的影响力和受关注程度。
在24,080篇论文中，1,760篇成功匹配用于引文频率和读者数量分析，1,212篇成功匹配用于Altmetric关注度分析。倾向得分匹配后，封面文章的引文数量显著更高（v = 560，P < 0.001），读者更多（v = 528，P < 0.001），AAS更高（v = 1384，P < 0.001）。对倾向得分匹配调整后的数据进行进一步的多变量回归分析显示存在显著关联，引文的回归系数为0.145，读者数量的回归系数为0.
