Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jul 24, 2019
Date Accepted: Mar 29, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
“To tweet or not to tweet? This is the question” A systematic review on the use of social media to increase the impact of health research
ABSTRACT
Background:
Social media are increasingly used by academics in all disciplines to share their publications on the Internet, reaching out to different audiences. In the last few years, specific indicators of social media impact have been developed (e.g., Almetrics), to complement traditional bibliometric indicators (e.g., citation count, h-index). In health research, it is unclear whether social media impact also translates in research impact.
Objective:
The primary aim of this study was to systematically review the literature to assess the impact of social media used to disseminate health research. The secondary aim was to assess the correlation between Altmetrics and citation-based metrics.
Methods:
We conducted a systematic review to identify studies that evaluated the use of social media for disseminating articles published in health-related journals. We specifically looked at reports that described experimental or correlational studies linking the use of social media with outcomes related to bibliometrics. We searched Medline, Embase, and CINHAL databases using a predefined search strategy (PROSPERO: CRD42017057709). We conducted independent and duplicate data selection and extraction to identify relevant studies. Given the heterogeneity of the included studies, we summarized the findings through a narrative synthesis.
Results:
Out of a total of 10,466 retrieved citations, we included 25 papers: four (16%) were ‘impact studies’ (answering the primary objective) while 21 (84%) were ‘correlational studies’ (answering the secondary objective). Impact studies reported mixed results. However, these studies had many limitations, including the use of interventions of low intensity and short duration. The majority of correlational studies suggested a positive association between traditional bibliometrics (e.g., number of citations) and social media metrics (e.g., number of mentions) in health research.
Conclusions:
The identified impact studies provide suggestive yet inconclusive evidence on the effect of using social media to increase the number of citations in health research. More experimental and longitudinal studies are needed to establish a clear causal link between social media impact and bibliometrics. Clinical Trial: PROSPERO: CRD42017057709
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