BACKGROUND
Quality and accuracy of online scientific data are crucial given the internet and social media serve nowadays as primary sources of medical knowledge.
OBJECTIVE
Our study aims to assess the relationship between online visibility and the scientific relevance of strabismus research.
METHODS
We used the Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) as a proxy for online visibility whereas citations and the journal’s impact factor served as a metric for scientific robustness. We identified articles including the keyword “strabismus” and evaluated the correlation between the aforementioned variables within the 100 articles with the highest AAS and 100 articles with the highest number of citations.
RESULTS
We demonstrated a significant, but weak correlation between online visibility and citations (P = .04, r = .22). We found no correlation between the Altmetric Score and the journal's impact factor (P = .15) or time (P = .37). For the 100 articles with the highest number of citations we found no correlation between the citations and the Altmetric Attention Score (P = .73) or the impact factor of the journal (P = .15).
CONCLUSIONS
Highly cited research related to strabismus is not always the most shared on social media. Therefore, researchers should make a greater effort to share high-impact articles related to strabismus on social media platforms to improve accessibility and quality of evidence-based knowledge for patients.