Altmetric and bibliometric analysis of obstetrics and gynecology research: influence of public engagement on citation potential

Whether research engagement on social media and other public platforms results in increased citations in obstetrics and gynecology remains uncertain. The Altmetric Attention Score is a metric of research influence based on mentions on social media and public platforms, such as newsfeeds and Wikipedia. The correlation between Altmetric Attention Scores, absolute citation rates, and the Relative Citation Ratio (a novel metric of research engagement also based on citation rates) in obstetrics and gynecology research is uncertain. To evaluate the correlation between Altmetric Attention Score, absolute citation rate, and Relative Citation Ratio for articles published in obstetrics and gynecology journals from 2004 to 2019. Our second objective was to identify, characterize, and compare the 100 articles with highest Altmetric Attention Scores, the 100 most-cited articles, and the 100 articles with highest Relative Citation Ratios. We performed a cross-sectional altmetric and bibliometric study of all obstetrics and gynecology articles indexed in the National Institutes of Health Open Citation Collection from 2004 to 2019. Articles were included if they were published in obstetrics and gynecology journals according to InCites Journal Citation Reports indexing. Citation data, including citation numbers and Relative Citation Ratios, were downloaded on March 20, 2021 and merged with altmetric data from the Altmetric Explorer on the basis of each article’s unique PubMed identification number. We assessed correlation between Altmetric Attention Scores and number of citations and Altmetric Attention Scores and Relative Citation Ratios by calculating the Pearson correlation coefficient. The 100 articles with highest Altmetric Attention Scores, the 100 most-cited articles, and the 100 articles with highest Relative Citation Ratios were characterized and compared using means (standard deviations) and mean differences (95% confidence intervals). There were 156,592 articles published in 82 obstetrics and gynecology journals and indexed in the National Institutes of Health Open Citation Collection between 2004 and 2019. The correlation coefficient was 0.18 (95% confidence interval, 0.17–0.19) for Altmetric Attention Scores vs number of citations and 0.10 (95% confidence interval, 0.09–0.11) for Altmetric Attention Scores vs Relative Citation Ratios. There was no overlap among the 100 articles on the highest Altmetric Attention Score list and the 100 most-cited list, and ther