Social media interaction of publications in the field of general surgery: A comparative analysis of the twitter performances of Q1 medical journals with their impact factor

Abstract

Background: It is a well-known fact that social media has the power to reach a great number of audiences through robust information, interaction, and communication. Twitter is also known to be one of the strongest social media tools, which is especially known for its high volume of information sharing. In this study it is aimed to analyse the relationship between the impact factor (IF) of Quartiles1(Q1) journals in the field of General Surgery and their performances on Twitter.
 Method: Surgical Q1 journals have been listed. While creating the list, journals without a Twitter account have been excluded from the study. The IF of the journals has been compared with their total shares, comments, likes, retweets, total views, followers, and total shares for all time between June 1st, 2023, and November 30th, 2023.
 Results: Results indicated moderate positive correlations between IF and engagement metrics like shares, comments, likes, and retweets, with follower count and total shares showing stronger statistically significant correlation.
 Conclusion: No comparative relationship or correlation is found between the parameters of the last six months and the IF. Only, a correlation has been observed with the total number of views within the last six months. A correlation is noted between the number of followers and the total number of shares for all time. These results are attributed to the fact that journals with a high IF are established and respected and lead to these outcomes even if they share at similar rates as other journals.