Luc, J. G., Archer, M. A., Arora, R. C., Bender, E. M., Blitz, A., Cooke, D. T., ... & Antonoff, M. B. (2021). Does tweeting improve citations? One-year results from the TSSMN prospective randomized trial. The Annals of thoracic surgery, 111(1), 296-300. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003497520308602

University of California, Berkeley

This study looked at original articles, splitting them up into an experimental group which were tweeted versus a control, which were not tweeted. They found that the tweeting of articles results in significantly more article citations over time. 

Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from the TSSMN Prospective Randomized Trial

Researchers randomly selected 112 articles published in "The Annals of Thoracic
Surgery" and "The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery" from 2017 to 2018. From these 112 articles, half (56) were randomly selected to be in the experimental group to be tweeted by the Thoracic Surgery Social Media Network (TSSMN) and the other half to be in the control group which were not tweeted. Artcles in each group were then paired with an article in the other group based on issue, article type, and research category in order to be compared. 

Four articles were then tweeted per day for 14 days by one TSSMN delegate and retweeted by 11 TSSMN delegates. Delegates were told to only retweet and not interact with the tweets in any other way. Tweets were standardized so that each included the main point of the article, the associated institutions and authors, and a link to the article, all written in simple English. 

Articles in the control group were not tweeted about.

Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from the TSSMN Prospective Randomized Trial Methodology

Data collected from this study included citations one year after the tweets versus at baseline, Altmetric score in order to look at impact, and Twitter analytics such as engagement, retweets, URL clicks, etc. 

The Student's t test was used to compare parametric continuous variations. These were expressed using mean +- standard deviation. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare nonparametric continuous variables. These were expressed using medians. Other categorical data were expressed using percentages and analyzed using a chi-squared test. Univariable and multivariabled regressions were also used to look at predictions. 

The software Stata was used for these analyses with a significant P-value set at 0.05. 



Does Tweeting Improve Citations? One-Year Results from the TSSMN Prospective Randomized Trial Data Analysis

- tweeted articles had a significant increase in Altmetric scores and Altmetric score percentiles compared to controls and compared to paired articles in the control group
- Altmetric score percentile is strongly correlated with number of citations 
- tweeting results in significant increase in citations 
- citations can be predicted by Twitter exposure and social media attention
- social media activity can have scholarly impact
- no difference in Altmetric scores and citation numbers between different research categories

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