Top-cited articles in medical professionalism: a bibliometric analysis versus altmetric scores

What is it about?

This study aimed at studying top-cited articles in the literature on medical professionalism. Citations refer to the number an article was cited by other researchers in their work. In academia, there is a believe that the number of citation counts could be used to evaluate the quality of a study and despite their limitations they have been used in some institutes in assessing research grant applications. However, several limitations have been encountered with citation counts. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of top-cited articles in relation to the number of citations and examine if tools focusing on social media such as altmetric could be of value. Top-cited articles were identified by searching the Web of Science database and on the same day, the altmetric score of each article was identified. We found no correlation (statistical relationship) between number of citations and number of years since publication, number of institutes, number of authors, females in authorship, or number of grants. No correlation was found between the number of citations and the altmetric scores. However, a correlation was found for articles published in 2007 and after. The topics covered were learning and teaching professionalism, curriculum issues, professional and unprofessional behavior. In conclusion, altmetric scores of articles were significantly correlated with citations counts for articles published in 2007 and after. Highly cited articles were produced mainly by the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The study reflects the emerging role of social media in research dissemination. Future studies should investigate the specific features of highly cited articles and factors reinforcing the distribution of research data among scholars and non-scholars.

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