Twitter Mentions and Academic Citations in the Urologic Literature

Abstract Objective To quantify the relationship between the number of Twitter mentions and the number of academic citations a urologic publication receives. Materials and Methods Two hundred and thirteen papers from 7 prominent urologic journals were examined 37 months after publication. Articles were evaluated with 2 citation based “bibliometrics” (Scopus, Google Scholar) and Twitter mentions were tracked using the Altmetric Bookmarklet. The number of article citations and Twitter mentions were compared using one-way Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and bivariate fit analysis. Results Seventy-three percent of articles had at least 1 Twitter mention. Forty-two percent of Twitter mentions occurred within the first week of the online publication date. Articles mentioned on Twitter had 2.0-fold more Scopus citations ( P P P . 01 and P = . 01) compared to articles not shared by their authors on Twitter. Conclusion The majority of urologic publications are being shared on Twitter. The number of citations a urologic publication receives up to 3 years after release is positively associated with the number of mentions it has on Twitter. Twitter activity may be an early indicator of ultimate academic impact of an academic urologic paper.