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. 2022 Jul 30:10:20503121221111694.
doi: 10.1177/20503121221111694. eCollection 2022.

The top 100 most impactful articles on the anterior cruciate ligament: An altmetric analysis of online media

Matthew D Civilette  1   2 , William R Rate  1 , Brett D Haislup  3 , Andrew S Cohen  3 , Lyn Camire  3 , Blake M Bodendorfer  4 , Heath P Gould  3
Affiliations

The top 100 most impactful articles on the anterior cruciate ligament: An altmetric analysis of online media

Matthew D Civilette et al. SAGE Open Med. .

Abstract

Objectives: To identify the top 100 most impactful anterior cruciate ligament articles in online media as measured by the Altmetric Attention Score and compare their characteristics to the most-cited anterior cruciate ligament articles in the scientific literature.

Methods: The Altmetric database was queried to identify all published articles pertaining to the anterior cruciate ligament. The search yielded 9445 articles, which were stratified by highest to lowest Altmetric Attention Score. The top 100 articles were included. Collected data included article type, article topic, journal name, and online mentions in news, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, and other sources. The geographic origin of each article was also determined based on the institutional affiliation of the first author.

Results: Altmetric Attention Score of the top 100 anterior cruciate ligament articles ranged from 109 to 2193 (median 172.0, interquartile range 137.5-271.5). Of the 100 articles, 65 were published in three journals: American Journal of Sports Medicine, British Journal of Sports Medicine, and Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy. The most prevalent article type was original research (60%), followed by systematic review/meta-analysis (18%). The most prevalent article topic was rehabilitation and return to play after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (22%), followed by epidemiology/risk factors (16%), injury prevention (14%), and biomechanics of anterior cruciate ligament injuries (14%). Of the top 100 articles, 54% were American, 31% were European, and 15% were published in other countries outside of the United States and Europe.

Conclusion: This study used Altmetric Attention Score to identify the 100 most engaged anterior cruciate ligament articles in online media. The characteristics of these articles differed substantially from the most-cited anterior cruciate ligament articles in the literature with regard to article type, article topic, geographic origin, and publication journal. These findings suggest that alternative metrics measure distinct components of anterior cruciate ligament article engagement and add an important dimension to understanding the overall impact of published research on the anterior cruciate ligament.

Keywords: AAS; ACL; Orthopedics; altmetric attention score; altmetrics; anterior cruciate ligament; bibliometrics; citation rate; sports medicine.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of conflicting interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
(a) A representation of the types of articles comprising the top 100 articles related to the ACL by Altmetric Attention Score (AAS); (b) Representation of article subtypes of the Original Research article type.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Characteristics of the article topics within the top 100 articles pertaining to the ACL according to Altmetric Attention Score (AAS).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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