Trial reportNeurosurgical review2024
A randomized controlled trial of social media promotion in neurosurgical publishing.
Trial report in Neurosurgical review, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Does social media promotion influence citation counts? A long-term follow-up to a randomised trial in a general neurosurgical journal.Neurosurgical review · 2025Trial
- Letter to editor: A randomized controlled trial of social media promotion in neurosurgical publishing.Neurosurgical review · 2024Article
- Comment on, "A randomized controlled trial of social media promotion in neurosurgical publishing".Neurosurgical review · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The importance of social media has seen a dramatic increase in recent times, but much about its influence in academia is still unknown. To date, no comparative studies analysing the effect of social media promotion on citation counts have been undertaken in neurosurgical publishing. We randomized 177 articles published in Acta Neurochirurgica from May to September 2020. The 89 articles in the intervention group received a standardized social media promotion through one post on our official Twitter/X account, whereas the 88 articles in the control group did not receive any social media promotion. Citation counts, website visits and PDF downloads were tracked at one and two years post-promotion. We found no significant difference in number of citations at one year post-promotion (Intervention: 1.85 ± 3.94 vs. Control: 2.67 ± 6.65, p = 0.322) or at two years (5.35 ± 7.39 vs. 7.09 ± 12.1, p = 0.249). Similarly, no difference was detected in website visits at one (587.46 ± 568.04 vs. 590.65 ± 636.25, p = 0.972) or two years (865.79 ± 855.80 vs. 896.31 ± 981.97, p = 0.826) and PDF downloads at one (183.40 ± 152.02 vs. 187.78 ± 199.01, p = 0.870) or two years (255.99 ± 218.97 vs. 260.97 ± 258.44, p = 0.890). In a randomized study, a structured promotion of general neurosurgical articles on Twitter/X did not significantly impact citation count, website visits, or PDF downloads compared to no social media promotion. Combined with published evidence to date, the impact of social media on citation counts in academic publishing ultimately remains unclear.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.