Newsworthiness vs scientific impact: are the most highly cited urology papers the most widely disseminated in the media?

Background Discordance exists between scientific impact and media attention. Altmetrics are non-traditional measures of impact which are composite scores that include social media and traditional media sharing of an article. Objective To assess whether a correlation exists between newsworthiness (Altmetric score) and the scientific impact markers such as citation analysis, impact factors and levels of evidence. Materials and Methods The top 5 most cited articles for the year 2014 and 2015 from the top 10 ranking urology journals (scientific impact group) were identified. The top 50 articles each in 2014 and 2015 were identified from Altmetric support based on media activity (media impact group). We determined the number of citations that these articles received in the scientific literature, and calculated correlations between citations with Altmetric scores. Results In the scientific impact group, the mean number of citations per article was 37.6, and the most highly cited articles were oncology guidelines. The mean Altmetric score in these articles was 14.8, There was a weak positive correlation between citations and Altmetric score (rs = 0.35, 95% CI 0.16-0.52, p