@Article{info:doi/10.2196/28859,
author="Oliveira J e Silva, Lucas
and Maldonado, Graciela
and Brigham, Tara
and Mullan, Aidan F
and Utengen, Audun
and Cabrera, Daniel",
title="Evaluating Scholars' Impact and Influence: Cross-sectional Study of the Correlation Between a Novel Social Media--Based Score and an Author-Level Citation Metric",
journal="J Med Internet Res",
year="2021",
month="May",
day="31",
volume="23",
number="5",
pages="e28859",
keywords="social media; Twitter; journal impact factor; h-index; digital scholarship; digital platform; Scopus; metrics; scientometrics; altmetrics; stakeholders; health care; digital health care",
abstract="Background: The development of an author-level complementary metric could play a role in the process of academic promotion through objective evaluation of scholars' influence and impact. Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the correlation between the Healthcare Social Graph (HSG) score, a novel social media influence and impact metric, and the h-index, a traditional author-level metric. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study of health care stakeholders with a social media presence randomly sampled from the Symplur database in May 2020. We performed stratified random sampling to obtain a representative sample with all strata of HSG scores. We manually queried the h-index in two reference-based databases (Scopus and Google Scholar). Continuous features (HSG score and h-index) from the included profiles were summarized as the median and IQR. We calculated the Spearman correlation coefficients ($\rho$) to evaluate the correlation between the HSG scores and h-indexes obtained from Google Scholar and Scopus. Results: A total of 286 (31.2{\%}) of the 917 stakeholders had a Google Scholar h-index available. The median HSG score for these profiles was 61.1 (IQR 48.2), and the median h-index was 14.5 (IQR 26.0). For the 286 subjects with the HSG score and Google Scholar h-index available, the Spearman correlation coefficient $\rho$ was 0.1979 (P<.001), indicating a weak positive correlation between these two metrics. A total of 715 (78{\%}) of 917 stakeholders had a Scopus h-index available. The median HSG score for these profiles was 57.6 (IQR 46.4), and the median h-index was 7 (IQR 16). For the 715 subjects with the HSG score and Scopus h-index available, $\rho$ was 0.2173 (P<.001), also indicating a weak positive correlation. Conclusions: We found a weak positive correlation between a novel author-level complementary metric and the h-index. More than a chiasm between traditional citation metrics and novel social media--based metrics, our findings point toward a bridge between the two domains. ",
issn="1438-8871",
doi="10.2196/28859",
url="https://www.jmir.org/2021/5/e28859",
url="https://doi.org/10.2196/28859",
url="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34057413"
}