Citation Advantage of Promoted Articles in a Cross-Publisher Distribution Platform: 36-Month Follow-up to a Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

Background There are limited evidence-based strategies that have been shown to increase the rate at which peer-reviewed articles are cited. In a previously reported randomized controlled trial, we demonstrated that promotion of article links in an online cross-publisher distribution platform (TrendMD) persistently augments citation rates after 12 months, leading to a statistically significant 50% increase in citations relative to the control. Objective This study aims to investigate if the citation advantage of promoted articles upholds after 36 months. Methods A total of 3200 published articles in 64 peer-reviewed journals across 8 subject areas were block randomized at the subject level to either the TrendMD group (n=1600) or the control group (n=1600) of the study. Articles were promoted in the TrendMD Network for 6 months. We compared the citation rates in both groups after 36 months. Results At 36 months, we found the citation advantage endured; articles randomized to TrendMD showed a 28% increase in mean citations relative to the control. The difference in mean citations at 36 months for articles randomized to TrendMD versus the control was 10.52 (95% CI 3.79-17.25) and was statistically significant (P=.001). Conclusions To our knowledge, this is the first randomized controlled trial to demonstrate how a postpublication article promotion intervention can be used to persistently augment citations of peer-reviewed articles. TrendMD is an efficient digital tool for knowledge translation and dissemination to targeted audiences to facilitate the uptake of research.

The enhanced research impact of self‐archiving platforms: Evidence from bioRxiv

“…First, we employ a novel method using the PMRA text-mining algorithm to match the treated group with a control group, thereby creating a control group that closely resembles the results from random assignments in experiments. With the exception of Kudlow et al (2020Kudlow et al ( , 2021, randomized controlled trials are rarely adopted in bibliometrics studies due to the difficulties of organizing experiments on scientists and the scarcity of natural experiments. Through this study, we demonstrate the feasibility of estimating causal effects using observational and bibliometric data by utilizing algorithms to match samples.…”

Measuring serendipity with altmetrics and randomness

“…In a strict reading, even paid paper ads (like TrendMD; cf. Kudlow et al, 2021) might be "random," and thus variety-enhancing, because bibliometric patterns may not be able to predict which papers will be distributed commercially (though this remains a hypothesis). 4.…”

“…Query-based academic search engines and many paper recommender systems are thus redundancy-reproducing research discovery tools (e.g. Kudlow et al, 2021; Qin et al, 2022). They are based on probabilistic models that calculate the informational relevance of a suggested publication (Amati and Van Rijsbergen, 2002).…”