Do popular research topics attract the most social attention? A first proposal based on OpenAlex and Wikipedia

Abstract

Altmetric research has seen its horizons expanded to the heterogeneity of interactions produced between scientific and non-scientific entities. In this context, Wikipedia stands out as a social media of particular interest as the page views of its articles have proven to be a valuable metric of social attention. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this new research stream by analysing whether the research topics of greatest academic interest align with those that attract the most social attention. To this end, the OpenAlex concepts are explored by comparing their works count with the page views of their respective Wikipedia articles. As a result, a correlation analysis between the two metrics reveals a lack of connection between the two realms. Likewise, root-level concepts are explored to illustrate such a difference.