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Appreciation of literature by the anaesthetist: A comparison of citations, downloads and Altmetric Attention Score
Author(s) -
Kampman Jasper M.,
Hermanides Jeroen,
Boere Pascal R. Q.,
Hollmann Markus W.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
acta anaesthesiologica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.738
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1399-6576
pISSN - 0001-5172
DOI - 10.1111/aas.13575
Subject(s) - altmetrics , medicine , download , the internet , clinical practice , positive correlation , family medicine , library science , computer science , world wide web
Background Different metrics exist to evaluate the impact of a paper. Traditionally, scientific citations are leading, but nowadays new, internet‐based, metrics like downloads or Altmetric Attention Score receive increasing attention. We hypothesised a gap between these metrics, reflected by a divergence between scientific and clinical appreciation of anaesthesia literature. Methods We collected the top 100 most cited and the top 100 most downloaded articles in Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica (AAS) and Anesthesia & Analgesia (A&A) published between 2014 and 2018. We analysed the relationship between the average number of citations per year, downloads per year and Altmetric Attention Score. Results For both AAS and A&A , a significant correlation between the 100 most cited articles and their downloads ( r = .573 and .603, respectively, P < .001) was found. However, only a poor correlation with Altmetric Attention Score was determined. For the 100 most downloaded articles, download frequency did not correlate with their number of citations ( r = .035 and .139 respectively), but did correlate significantly with the Altmetric Attention Score ( r = .458 and .354, P < .001). Conclusion Highly cited articles are downloaded more frequently. The most downloaded articles, however, did not receive more citations. In contrast to the most cited articles, more frequently downloaded papers had a higher Altmetric Attention Score. Thus, a ‘trending’ anaesthesia paper is not a prerequisite for scientific appreciation, reflecting a gap between clinical and scientific appreciation of literature.