Social Media And Its Impact on Medical Research

Amid the cacophony of a year-end media blitz that bombards us with listicles of the greatest scientific discoveries, the top papers, and the cutest animal stories, we seemed to have missed an important and serious contribution to our understanding of social media and its relationship to scientific publishing.

I was alerted to this paper the old-fashioned way-in conversation with a cardiovascular researcher-which I found rather odd, because research on social media typically attracts the attention of those who promote social media. Indeed, I can find no mention of it among those who follow bibliometric and sociometric research.