Public Interest in Cognitive Impairment: An Analysis of the Top 50 Articles on Cognitive Impairment on Altmetric

BACKGROUND: As the average life expectancy continues to increase, interest in cognitive impairment is increasing. Nowadays, as social media expands its reach, academic research is spreading through social media, changing the way and speed by which research is propagated and also who consumes this content. Therefore, using Altmetric, a new web-based set of metrics that analyzes the impact of content on social media platforms, we investigated the characteristics of influential research articles on the topic of cognitive impairment in social media. METHODS: An Altmetric Explorer search was performed on May 25, 2018, to extract the following information: (i) journal name, (ii) journal impact factor (IF), (iii) year of publication, (iv) article topic, (v) article type, and (vi) cognitive impairment subtype. RESULTS: The journal “Neurology” was the most cited journal for cognitive impairment articles shared on social media. Among the various types of cognitive impairment, most articles were related to dementia (all subtypes), Alzheimer's disease, and aging. The most common article type was original scientific paper, especially cohort study. The most popular topic was the identification of protective or risk factors for cognitive impairment. CONCLUSION: The characteristics of articles with a high Altmetric Attention Score were somewhat different from those of articles with a high number of traditional citations. Social media had the disadvantage that it was difficult to verify the authenticity of the primary source in question, but the advantage was that it could immediately determine the trends regarding how information about that source was being shared and consumed. Therefore, it may be advisable to use Altmetric analysis in combination with traditional methods of evaluating the research articles to understand the dissemination of scientific research and to direct future research.