A Bibliometric Analysis Using Alternative Metrics for Articles in the Annals of Rehabilitation Medicine

To investigate the articles in the Annals of Rehabilitation Medicine (ARM) using a bibliometric analysis to verify whether there is a correlation between the topics of interest for expert groups and the public media.

A total of 1,088 ARM articles from the third issue of 2011 to the third issue of 2019 were analyzed. We conducted a bibliometric analysis of the articles using conventional metrics (CM) and alternative metrics (AM). The CM was investigated by collating the type of publication, number of citations, and the specific field of rehabilitation medicine for each article. The AM was analyzed using the Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) provided by Altmetric, the leading AM company. The correlation between the number of citations and the AAS was tested using the Spearman rank correlation coefficient.

The combined ratio of original articles and case reports was over 90% in this study; however, the total distribution was significantly different compared to previous bibliometric studies (p<0.05). There were 233 articles that satisfied both conditions of at least one citation and at least one AAS point. The number of citations and the AAS were found to have a statistically significant positive linear correlation on a scatter plot (r=0.216, p=0.001).

There is a significant correlation between AM and CM, which means itis important to increase the dissemination of academic knowledge through the public media and increase the status of the journal by increasing the citation-related index.