Authors: Ian J McGeary, Kevin Y Wang, Ivan Z Liu, Joseph X Robin, Carter J Boyd, Kshipra Hemal
Background/Purpose: While the novel Coronavirus 2019 disease’s (COVID-19) impact on the practice of orthopaedics has been readily apparent, the effects of COVID-19 on the orthopaedic literature has not been studied. The objective of this paper is to analyze the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on peer-reviewed articles published in the orthopaedic surgery literature. Materials and Methods: Using the Journal Citation Reports, twenty orthopaedic surgery journals with the highest impact factor in 2019 were selected and articles within those journals were sorted by mention of COVID-19. The Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) and citation count were collected and compared for COVID-19 versus non-COVID-19 related articles using the Mann-Whitney U test. Furthermore, within COVID-19 related articles, AAS and citation count were compared using Kruskal-Wallis test between sub specialty of orthopaedics, type of article, study type, and quarter of publication. Results: The average AAS of COVID-19 articles was significantly higher than non-COVID articles (15 vs. 6, p=0.019). Within COVID-19 articles, those pertaining to spine and trauma had a significantly lower AAS than those pertaining to orthopaedics as a whole (20 & 6 vs 51, p Conclusion: Orthopaedic articles related to COVID-19 demonstrated a greater influence, dissemination, and impact than articles not related to COVID-19 as demonstrated by AAS and citations accrued. Keywords: Altmetric, Bibliometric, Citation, Characterization, COVID-19, Pandemic, Orthopaedic surgery, Literature
Open full article page