Appreciation of literature by the anaesthetist: A comparison of citations, downloads and Altmetric Attention Score

Abstract

Background: Different metrics exist to evaluate the impact of a paper. Traditionally, scientific citations are leading, but nowadays new, internet-based, metrics like downloads or Altmetric Attention Score receive increasing attention. We hypothesised a gap between these metrics, reflected by a divergence between scientific and clinical appreciation of anaesthesia literature. Methods: We collected the top 100 most cited and the top 100 most downloaded articles in Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica (AAS) and Anesthesia & Analgesia (A&A) published between 2014 and 2018. We analysed the relationship between the average number of citations per year, downloads per year and Altmetric Attention Score. Results: For both AAS and A&A, a significant correlation between the 100 most cited articles and their downloads (r =.573 and.603, respectively, P