Predictors of citations and altmetric scores in general surgery literature

This study aimed to determine various article characteristics influencing the citations and altmetric scores using papers published in a year in four high-ranking surgery journals.

We included all papers (n= 819 articles) published between January 2015 to December 2015 in the Annals of Surgery, British Journal of Surgery, JAMA Surgery and Journal of American College of Surgeons. Article characteristics were manually extracted. We determined citation count using the Web of Science database and used univariate analysis and negative binomial regression to determine which article characteristics affect citations and altmetric scores.

Mean number of citations and altmetric score received by the article were 44.6 (0-475) and 19.2 (0-665) respectively. Majority of the articles contained at least one citation (98.3%) and altmetric score (98.2%). In regression analysis, citation count was significantly associated with the journal [Annals of Surgery (IRR= 1.93), JAMA surgery (IRR= 1.76)] and non-funded research (IRR= 0.83). The altmetric score was significantly associated with the country of the corresponding author (US) (IRR= 1.3), study subtopic, journal [JAMA surgery (IRR= 2.33)], non-funded (IRR= 0.74) and non-open-access publication (IRR= 0.44).

Article metrics were found to be associated with specific study subtopics, country of the corresponding author, funding, open-access publication and the journal. These results might help editors, reviewers and authors to produce, review and publish more impactful studies. A similar study in the future may help to better understand the changing dynamics of academic publishing.