Summary

The objective of this study was to use the AAS to identify the top 100 most impactful meniscus articles in online media and compare their characteristics to the 100 most-cited meniscus articles in the scientific literature.

Abstract

Introduction

Traditional metrics of academic impact such as citation scoring and journal impact factor do not capture the influence of online dissemination of scientific literature concerning the meniscus. Thus, new bibliometric profiles measuring impact and exposure of scientific research online, namely the Altmetric Attention Score (AAS), have been introduced as an alternative to traditional bibliometric measures. The objective of this study was to use the AAS to identify the top 100 most impactful meniscus articles in online media and compare their characteristics to the 100 most-cited meniscus articles in the scientific literature.

Methods

The Altmetric database was queried to identify all published articles pertaining to the meniscus of the knee. The top 100 out of 5,829 articles published between 1945 and 2021 were selected for inclusion and stratified from highest to lowest AAS. Several characteristics of each article were analyzed, including journal of publication, article type, article topic, and number of online mentions (e.g., news, blogs, policy, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube). The geographic region of each article was also determined based on the institutional affiliation of the first author.

Results

Among the included articles, AAS values ranged from 1886 to 33 with a median of 69.5 (25th percentile: 45, 75th percentile: 139). The articles came from 40 journals, however 40 of the top 100 were published in only three journals: British Journal of Sports Medicine, American Journal of Sports Medicine, and Arthroscopy: The Journal of Arthroscopic & Related Surgery. The most common article type was randomized control trial (19%), followed by retrospective cohort review articles (12%) and systematic reviews/meta-analyses (11%). The most common article topic was treatment (52%), followed by epidemiology (16%) and diagnostics (8%) of meniscal tears. The online media sources that correlated most strongly with AAS score were mainstream news outlets (r=0.95 R2=0.90), blogs (r=0.85, R2=0.72), Twitter (r=0.88, R2=0.78), Facebook (r=0.88, R2=0.78), and Reddit (r=0.78, R2=0.52).

Discussion

This study assesses the 100 most impactful meniscus articles according to the novel AAS and traditional citation-based metrics. The characteristics of the top articles differed substantially depending on the method used in terms of article type, article topic, geographic origin, and publication journal. Our findings suggest that the AAS measures a distinct aspect of online article engagement and adds an important perspective to understanding the overall impact of published research on the meniscus.

Significance

No previous study has investigated which article characteristics contribute to the most influential online articles on the meniscus; such information can be used by authors in the future to better engage academic and layperson readers alike in online media.