The Online Attention to Cleft Lip and Palate Research: An Altmetric Analysis

Abstract

Objectives: To identify research articles related to cleft lip and/or cleft palate (CL/P) that generated the highest online attention. Methods: Altmetric Explorer was used to identify the 100 articles with the highest Altmetric Attention Score (AAS). Descriptive and correlation statistics were performed to study the characteristics of these articles in relation to their publication data, research type and domain, number of Mendeley readers, and dimensions citations. Citation counts were extracted from Scopus and Google Scholar. Results: The median AAS for the top 100 outputs was 22 (range from 12 to 458). The outputs were mostly discussed on Twitter (median = 8; range = 0-131). Topics discussing treatment and care for patients with CL/P accounted for 38% of the articles with the highest AAS followed by etiology and risk factors (32%). The majority of articles originated from the USA (46%) followed by Europe (16%) and the United Kingdom (15%). No significant differences were observed in AAS among different study designs, topic domains, journals’ ranking and impact factor, and the number of citations in Scopus and Google Scholar. Conclusions: Researchers should consider use of social platforms to disseminate their work among scholars and nonscholars. Altmetrics can be combined with traditional metrics for a more comprehensive assessment of research impact.