Scientometric Analysis of the Top 50 Most-Cited Joint Arthroplasty Papers: Traditional vs Altmetric Measures

BACKGROUND: Alternative scientometric measures have introduced a novel view of the scientific literature. This study aimed to identify the top 50 most-cited recent articles in the field of knee and hip arthroplasty, characterize their traditional and alternative scientometric measures, and determine the relationship between traditional and alternative scientometric measures. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The 50 most-cited articles with the term “arthroplasty” in the title that were published between 2015 and 2019 were retrieved from the Scopus database. Alternative scientometric parameters such as Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) from Altmetrics bookmarklet (Altmetrics.com) were retrieved. Scientometric variables such as journal impact factor, first author H-index, and keywords were also extracted. RESULTS: The 50 most-cited papers accrued 7955 total citations, with a mean of 159.10 ± 56.4 citations per article. The overall mean AAS across the papers was 63.4 ± 164.8. The mean first author’s H-index was 23.8 ± 18.9. Papers published in 2017 and 2018 had a significantly higher mean AAS than those published in 2015 and 2016 (35.1 vs 22.5, P = .009). Citation count was weakly correlated with the AAS (correlation coefficient = 0.379, P = .009). Also, AAS had significant correlations with the journal’s impact factor (P < .001). CONCLUSION: We found that the AAS was highest in more recently published papers, while citation count had the opposite trend. The AAS was significantly correlated with the journal’s impact factor and citation count, but the correlation is weak. This suggests that the alternative scientometric measures are complementary to, and not substitutes for, complement traditional measures such as citation count and impact factor.