Background: As the dissemination of scientific knowledge pervades social media, appraising impact with traditional bibliometrics led to the creation of alternative metrics, termed altmetrics. Lacking existent foot and ankle surgery literature altmetric analysis, we analyzed the 10 most-cited articles in the Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association (JAPMA) and The Journal of Foot and Ankle Surgery (JFAS) in 2013 and 2017.
Methods: Citation count, Altmetric Attention Score (AAS), Mendeley Reads, and professional society-affiliated Twitter ages were collected and analyzed with descriptive statistics. Pearson correlation coefficient identified relationships between traditional and nontraditional metrics.
Results: The 40 articles showed a high median and large range in total citations for JAPMA (13.5 [range, 5-27]) and JFAS (28 [range, 5-69]). Media AAS Mendeley Reads also showed a high median with wide range for both JAPMA (32.5 [range, 0-135]) and JFAS (25 [range, 0-113)]. No significant correlation between total citations and AAS was seen in 2013 (r = -0.205; P = .388) or 2017 (r = -0.029; P = .903). The correlation between total citation count and Mendeley reads was significant in 2017 (r = 0.646; P = .002) but not in 2013 (r = -0.078; P = .744). Although cumulative AAS increased from 2013 to 2017 by 68.75%, with Twitter contributing most to both periods, there existed no significant correlation with Twitter age and the correlation coefficient between AAS and total citations (r = 0.655; P = .173).
Conclusions: The results of this investigation show the utility and predictivity of alternative metrics in complementing traditional bibliometrics and encourage the promotion of publications through journal-specific social media.