Social Media Coverage of Scientific Articles Immediately after Publication Predicts Subsequent Citations-#SoME-Impact Score: Observational Analysis

Abstract

Background: Social media coverage is increasingly used to spread the message of scientific publications. Traditionally, the scientific impact of an article is measured by the number of citations. At a journal level, this conventionally matures over a 2-year period, and it is challenging to gauge impact around the time of publication. Objective: We, therefore, aimed to assess whether Web-based attention is associated with citations and to develop a predictive model that assigns relative importance to different elements of social media coverage: The #SoME_Impact score. Methods: We included all original articles published in 2015 in a selection of the highest impact journals: The New England Jo..