Academic and online attention to palliative care: A bibliometric and altmetric perspective

Abstract

Objective: With a combined bibliometric and altmetric study, we aimed to provide a visually detailed perspective on palliative care, which is attracting increasing attention from academia and society. We also evaluated the relationship between supporting and contrasting citation counts and the altmetric attention score (AAS) for the first time in the literature. Methods: Web of Science (WoS) database and Altmetric.com website were used to create Top100 (T100) citation and altmetric lists. Supporting and contrasting citations were found using Scite.ai database. Articles in both lists, published between 1975-2021, were analyzed in terms of study type, topic, first author, publication year, citation count, AAS, scite score, supporting and contrasting citation counts. Impact factor (IF), quartile of journal and journal citation indicator (JCI) were also examined. Results: A search of "Palliative care" in WoS yielded a total of 50.674 articles. A significant correlation was found between AAS and citation counts (p=0.001, r=0.328) in T100 citation list, and AAS and contrasting citations in T100 altmetric list (p=0,024, r=0,225). There was no statistically significant difference between IF, JCI and Q categories in both lists. Topic "PC for non-oncological diseases" were at the top of both lists. The USA, UK and Canada were countries with the most articles in T100 citation list. Conclusions: Palliative care articles that attract the attention of the academia also resonate on social media. Since AAS can be manipulated, it would be beneficial to use altmetric analysis in combination with bibliometric analysis rather than alone to formulate new policies on palliative care.