An Altmetrics Analysis of the Articles Published in the Medical Journal of the Islamic Republic of Iran (1987-2020)

Background: As a newly-emerged metric for evaluating scientific research, altmetrics captures the online activity regarding individual scientific items and is increasingly used in disseminating scientific information in a real-time span. This study aimed to conduct an altmetrics analysis of articles published in the Medical Journal of the Islamic Republic of Iran (MJIRI) during 1987-2020. Methods: Using the archives of MJIRI's articles (during 1987-2020) and the four databases of Google Scholar, Scopus, Dimensions, and Altmetrics needed data on received citations as well as altmetric indicators and altmetric attention scores of these articles were extracted manually in December 2020. Data analysis was done in Excell and SPSS-25. Results: Only 1274 MJIRI articles (about 51%) were present in the Altmetric Institute and had an altmetric attention score. Only 109 papers (8.5%) were shared at least once on online social media. Twitter was the most frequent social medium used for sharing the articles (n=91, 7.14%). These articles were twitted 171 times in total and the mean rate of twitting them was 1.88 per paper. Users from 21 countries in the world tweeted the articles. The top three twitting courtiers/regions were the United States (n=47), the United Kingdom (n=14) and India (n=3), respectively. Regarding twitters' membership status, the top three ranks were dedicated to the members of the public with 137 twits, practitioners (doctors and other healthcare professionals) with 18 twits and scientists with 16 twits. In Mendeley, the top three ranks were dedicated to master students (n=284), bachelor students (n=240) and Ph.D. students (n=155), respectively. The top three disciplines in this regard were medicine and dentistry (n=335), nursing and health profession (n=190), and biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology (n=68). Most of the highly-mentioned articles were review papers. The relationship between the altmetric attention score and citation performance of MJIR articles was not significant (p>0.05). Conclusion: This study is one of the first studies to investigate the altmetrics indicators of articles published in an Iranian high-prestigious internationally-wide medical journal. Using social media tools can certainly promote medical scholars' scientific interactions and make added value for research published in medical journals. Editorial boards, including that of MJIRI can use altmetrics for detecting research trends and publishing approaches and consequently increased citation counts and research impact.