The power of social media: broader Twitter outreach and higher Altmetric scores significantly amplify citation reach

OBJECTIVE The authors sought to quantify the role of social media-related academic activity through use of the Alt- metric score (a composite score based on social media attention from a variety of sources) and investigate its potential impact on the number of citations received at 3 years postpublication (articles published between January 2019 and December 2019). METHODS Articles published in the top 12 neurosurgical journals according to Google Scholar (based on 5-year Web of Science impact factors, 2017-2021) were identified. Data collected included days since publication, Altmetric scores, and total number of tweets (posts), and 3-year citations were obtained from Google Scholar. A multiple linear regression model was created that featured a blocking method to stratify confounding variables from most to least contributing. Furthermore, the data were dichotomized by publications with >= 10 citations (top 25th percentile) and those with < 10 to analyze the impact of the score on total number of citations received at 3 years, using an independent-samples Mann- Whitney U-test. RESULTS Among 6721 included articles, the mean Altmetric score was 3.76 +/- 15.69 and the mean number of citations received was 9.61 +/- 22.16. When accounting for relevant control variables, the Altmetric score was a significant predictor of the total number of citations accumulated at 3 years (variability of 10.17%). On statistical testing, the Altmetric score was significantly higher in publications with >= 10 citations (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS The authors report a strong, statistically significant correlation between the Altmetric score and the number of citations received. To their knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate the impact of social media academic activity on neurosurgery article citation dissemination, potentially influencing resident medical education.