Altmetric Attention and Citations in Ophthalmology Research from 2012 to 2021

Background: The Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) is a quantitative measure of the attention, or “mentions,” that a research output, such as a journal article or data set, has received from various sources, including news, social media, policy documents, blogs, and online reference managers. Our objective was to examine the relationship between AAS, citation count, and open access status of peer-reviewed ophthalmology articles over a 10-year period. Methods: A cross-sectional, scientometric analysis of ophthalmology-centric articles published from January 1, 2012, to December 31, 2021, was conducted using publicly available online data from Altmetric Explorer. The dataset comprised 89,957 ophthalmology research articles from 106 journals. Social media and other forms of digital media mentions were quantified by the Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) and citation count were evaluated for included articles both in summation and with respect to open access (OA) versus subscription access (SA) status. Results: Of the 89,957 included articles, 73,133 received at least one mention (i.e., a nonzero AAS score). Analysis of individual articles revealed an overall weak positive correlation between AAS and citation count (r = 0.17, p < 0.05). A strong correlation was observed between total AAS and total citations accrued by each journal (r = 0.60, p < 0.05), but this correlation was no longer statistically significant when examining average AAS and citations per journal article. In addition, there was a tenfold increase in total media mentions as measured by AAS per year from 7,000 in 2012 to over 70,000 by 2021. The academic landscape also shifted toward open access, with OA articles (6,480 [56.4%]) outnumbering subscription access (SA) articles (5,012 [43.6%]) by the end of 2021. Furthermore, OA articles outperformed SA articles in social media engagement, averaging 8.77 media mentions compared to 4.47 for SA in 2021 (p < 0.05). Conclusions: In the field of ophthalmology, AAS and citation count have a weak but significant correlation at the individual article level, and this correlation strengthens at the journal level. In addition, there is a trend toward open-access publications in ophthalmology that have a significant positive relationship with AAS.