Measuring Social Media Attention of Scientific Research on COVID-19: An Investigation on Article-Level Metrics Data of Dimensions

Abstract

Zahra Batooli, Mansour Sayyah

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of scientific productions on COVID-19 in social media for four months. This applied and scientometric study was conducted using the altmetrics approach. The data sources for this study included research papers published about the COVID-19 indexed in the Dimensions platform from December 2019 to March 2020. Approximately, 20% of the data on research articles with the highest citations in addition to 20% of the articles with the highest Altmetric Attention Scores (AASs) including title, journal, citation, and altmetrics indicators was extracted and analyzed by SPSS 16.0. The results showed that 1910 scientific productions about the COVID-19 were indexed in the Dimensions platform. A considerable number of these articles were accessible via preprint services and were published in journals such as The Lancet, JAMA, BMJ, and NEJM. Authors from China and Japan were the most active authors. All 382 articles had AAS, that is, all of these articles received attention, at least in one of the social media articles. The highest and lowest AAS for these articles ranged from 14030 to 6, respectively. These results showed a high rate of attention by researchers and users of social media to the articles presented on COVID-19. The results of this research also showed a significant positive relationship between citations and altmetric indicators. Based on the results, it was concluded that the information provided on COVID-19 was remarkably high. In addition, the result showed that the information demand by social media audiences was also high.

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