Impact of Randomized Controlled Trials in the Social Media: Does Science Trend As Much As Everyday Events?
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ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC REPORT
Impact of Randomized Controlled Trials in the Social Media: Does Science Trend As Much As Everyday Events? Laura Lorenzon1
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Rebecca C. Grossman2
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Kjetil Soreide3,4
Accepted: 18 August 2020 Ó Socie´te´ Internationale de Chirurgie 2020
Abstract Background The approach to the scientific literature is evolving. Currently, dissemination of articles happens in real time through social media (SoMe) channels, and little is known about its impact in medicine. The aim of this study was to investigate if SoMe dissemination followed trends independent from articles type and content. Methods First, the SoMe engagement of a popular theme (#BlackFriday) and a relevant theme (#ClimateChange) was compared using a SoMe analytic tool to test if the popular theme would reach more engagement. In a second analysis, themes in colorectal surgery in the SoMe community were explored. Altmetric Explorer was searched for the term ‘‘colorectal surgery’’ and the outputs were categorized into ‘randomized controlled trials’ (RCTs) and ‘other studies’. Subgroups were compared for the Altmetric scores using statistical analyses. Results The analytic tool documented that #BlackFriday outnumbered #ClimateChange in mentions and engagement (1.6 million vs 127.000 mentions). Following, Altmetric Explorer identified 1381 articles, including 92 RCTs (7.1%). Overall, 25,554 mentions were documented from 1205 outputs (97.0% by Twitter). A greater percentage of ‘‘other studies’’ ranked in the lower Altmetric score categories (p = 0.0007). Similarly, the median Altmetric score was higher in the RCT subgroup comparing with ‘‘other studies’’ (6.5 vs. 2.0, Mann–Whitney p = 0.0001). Conclusions In this study, RCTs represented just the 7.1% of the studies and produced 11% of Twitter outputs. The median Altmetric scores obtained by RCTs were higher than those of other studies.
Introduction Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00268-020-05769-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Laura Lorenzon [email protected] 1
General Surgery Unit, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli, Catholic University, Largo Francesco Vito 1, 00168 Rome, Italy
2
Department of General Surgery, Wexham Park Hospital, Frimley Health NHS Trust, Slough, UK
3
Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Stavanger University Hospital, Stavanger, Norway
4
Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Research communication and distribution have changed dramatically in medical sciences over the last three decades (Fig. 1). Currently, about a quarter of scholarly literature is published ‘open access’ and this proportion is increasing [1]. Furthermore, medical news from journals, science groups and conferences is now available in real time, with opportunity for access, interaction and engagement [2–6]. Instant connectivity has changed the perception of news uptake, impact and metrics for success. In addition
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