Role of Altmetric Attention Scores in Evaluating the Influence of Spine Surgery Research

Study Design: Retrospective cohort. Objective: To analyze the annual trends in the most prevalent topics, journals, and geographic regions of the top 100 spine surgery articles, as determined by altmetric attention scores (AASs). We also describe the relationship between AAS and traditional article metrics. Background: The rapid growth of social media has transformed how medical literature is disseminated and perceived, including within the field of spine surgery. AAS is a metric that characterizes an article’s reach and impact in various online sources. Materials and Methods: We reviewed the Altmetric database to identify the top 100 spine surgery articles by AAS from 2015 to 2020 across 8 leading spine journals. Article topics, geographic origins, and publishing journals were analyzed. Correlation analyses were performed between AAS and traditional metrics. Results: Five hundred forty-one studies met the inclusion criteria. The majority were published in Spine (34.4%), The Spine Journal (25.7%), European Spine Journal (15.0%), and Journal of Neurosurgery : Spine (14.2%). North America and Europe were the predominant regions of origin. The most common topics were injections (12.2%), diagnostics (11.8%), and complications (11.3%). A weak correlation was found between AAS and traditional metrics such as impact factor (Pearson coefficient = 0.041), total citations (0.051), and citations per year (0.048). Conclusions: Although AAS provides insights into the public and online engagement of articles, it shows only a weak correlation with traditional metrics. Therefore, AAS should be considered a complementary metric for gauging the impact of research. In the era of social media, authors should continue to promote their research to broaden readership, however further investigation into characterizing article impact is warranted.