Alternative publication metrics in the time of COVID-19

Alternative metrics are unique bibliometrics comprising social, news, and other sources of media outside of traditional academic citations. Some have suggested that these metrics can complement traditional metrics of research impact, including public engagement with research. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to study alternative metrics and the dissemination of scientific research given the heightened academic and public interest. This study analyzed Altmetric Attention Scores for the top 25 publications on COVID-19 and the top 25 non–COVID-19 publications in 2020. There were significantly higher levels of social attention scores across multiple metrics for COVID-19 articles than for non–COVID-19 articles for that year. There was a slightly higher goodness of fit between Altmetric Attention Scores and academic citations for COVID-19 publications than for non–COVID-19 publications, although trendline differences were not significant. These results suggest that researchers should be aware that their studies can become highly visible on publicly available social and news media platforms, especially during events of high interest (such as a global pandemic).