Top 100 articles on vitamin D: Bibliometric versus altmetric analysis

To analyse the main features of the top 100 (T100) most cited articles in academia and 100 most discussed articles on social media about vitamin D from 1975 to 2021 and compare bibliometric and altmetric analysis.

'Vitamin D' was searched from the Web of Science database and Altmetric.com website, and T100 citation and altmetric lists were created, respectively. Articles in both lists were analysed in terms of study type, topic, first author, publication year, citation number and altmetric attention score (AAS). Impact factor (IF) and quartile of journal, in which the articles were published was also examined.

The article "Vitamin D Deficiency" by Holick MF, published in the New England Journal of Medicine was the most cited article (n=8492), original scientific paper was the most frequent study type in both lists. No correlation was found between AAS and citation number in both lists (r=0.176, p=0.081; r=0.157, p=0.119, respectively). The journals on the T100 citation list had a statistically significantly higher IF than the journals in the T100 altmetric list (p<0.001).

Altmetric analysis of vitamin D is currently insufficient to replace traditional bibliometric analysis but can provide valuable information about the society's interest. As social media gains more importance every day in our lives, high altmetric score could affect future interests and direct studies (Tab. 6, Fig. 3, Ref. 21).