Altmetrics

In scholarly and scientific publishing, altmetrics are non-traditional bibliometrics proposed as an alternative or complement to more traditional citation metrics impact, such as impact factor and h-index.

Neurosurgery guidelines are developed based on evaluating the most up-to-date evidence. However, the current approach incompletely considers or altogether avoids cost-effectiveness when formulating these guidelines ¹⁾.

Future efforts at measuring guideline impact will have to take this perspective into account. The limitations of bibliometrics have also motivated the study for new methods of quantifying impact. The rise of social media as a means of information dissemination has extended into the scientific literature and has led to the creation of an alternative system of analysis termed Altmetrics ²⁾.

The top 100 neurosurgical articles in altmetrics belonged primarily to those with active accounts, with Journal of Neurosurgery ranking the highest (33%), followed by Neurosurgery (29%) ³⁾.

The Altmetric analysis of “trending” neurosurgical articles by Wang et al ⁴⁾ demonstrates that what represents an impactful publication can change after considering online resources. Prospective research that validates methods such as Altmetrics or Google Search query analysis will be necessary before widespread adoption is to take place ⁵⁾. Given that information dissemination will only continue moving in the direction of informal content sharing, we anticipate that these forms of citation analysis will increase in usage as well.