Original article
Health services research and policy
Social Media and Peer-Reviewed Medical Journal Readership: A Randomized Prospective Controlled Trial

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacr.2016.12.024Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective

To prospectively evaluate the impact of increasing levels of social media engagement on page visits and web-link clicks for content published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

Methods

A three-arm prospective trial was designed using a control group, a basic Twitter intervention group (using only the Journal’s @JACRJournal Twitter account), and an enhanced Twitter intervention group (using the personal Twitter accounts of editorial board members and trainees). Overall, 428 articles published between June 2013 and July 2015 were randomly assigned to the three groups. Article-specific tweets for both intervention arms were sent between September 14, 2015, and October 28, 2015. Primary end points included article-specific weekly and monthly page visits on the journal’s Elsevier website (Amsterdam, Netherlands). For the two intervention groups, additional end points included 7-day and 30-day Twitter link clicks.

Results

Weekly page visits for the enhanced Twitter arm (mean 18.2; 95% confidence interval [CI] 15.6-20.7) were significantly higher when compared with the weekly page visits for the control arm (mean 7.6; 95% CI 1.7-13.6). However, there was no demonstrable increase in weekly page visits (mean 9.4; 95% CI 7.4-11.5) for the basic Twitter arm compared with the control arm. No intervention effects over control, regardless of Twitter arm assignment, were demonstrated for monthly page visits. The enhanced Twitter intervention resulted in a statistically significant increase in both 7-day and 30-day Twitter link clicks compared with the basic Twitter intervention group.

Conclusions

An organized social media strategy, with focused social media activity from editorial board members, increased engagement with content published in a peer-reviewed radiology journal.

Introduction

Many peer-reviewed medical journals have recently begun using social media tools, such as blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter profiles, to increase awareness and distribution of journal content. However, the impact of increasing use of social media outlets by peer-reviewed medical journals is unknown. Despite the known correlation between increasing social media attention and article citation rates [1], it is unknown whether the social media attention an article receives is a result of the article’s importance or whether social media itself increases the reach and influence of peer-reviewed material.

Two recent studies by Fox and colleagues concluded that using a journal’s Facebook and Twitter account to post about journal content on social media sites did not increase the number of times an article was viewed when compared with a randomized control group 2, 3. However, the referenced studies did not use editorial board members’ personal social media accounts to aid in distribution. “Push-only” tweets and Facebook posts from businesses and brands have been shown to have less engagement than those from personal social media profiles [4], which may account for the lack of social media impact observed by Fox et al. Thus, the purpose of this study is to prospectively analyze the short-term impact of social media activity from both the journal’s Twitter account and Twitter activity from editorial board members on engagement with peer-reviewed content from a single medical journal. We hypothesize that increasing levels of social media activity and personal engagement will increase weekly and monthly page visits and web link clicks of content published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR).

Section snippets

Study Groups

We designed a three-arm (control arm and two Twitter intervention arms) randomized controlled trial evaluating the efficacy of a Twitter intervention to enhance engagement with articles published in the JACR. The basic Twitter arm consisted of a single tweet from the @JACRJournal Twitter account per article per day. A single JACR editorial staff member manned the @JACRJournal account and sent out the tweets. In the enhanced Twitter arm, articles were assigned to one of four Twitter teams. Each

Analyses of the Primary Outcomes

Compared with the control arm, the number of weekly page visits for the enhanced Twitter arm was significantly higher (Table 2). The simple linear regression results for weekly page visits demonstrated a 12.9-point increase (95% CI 5.2-20.6, P < .001) in weekly page visits attributable to the enhanced Twitter arm assignment. In contrast, assignment to the basic Twitter arm demonstrated no increase in weekly page visits compared with the control arm. The simple linear regression results for

Discussion

Under an intent-to-treat analysis for the whole study sample, an enhanced Twitter engagement strategy with tweets generated from editorial board members’ personal accounts significantly increased weekly and monthly page visits per article by 139% and 42%, respectively, although the effect was significant only for weekly page visits. The basic Twitter strategy with engagement by a JACR editorial staff member did not have a significant effect on the primary outcomes. These findings are consistent

Take-Home Points

  • A social media strategy increased reader engagement with scholarly publications.

  • Social media activity via personal Twitter accounts of members of the editorial board, as well as a peer-reviewed journal twitter account, increased online article access compared with no Twitter intervention.

  • Using personal user-identifiable Twitter accounts as a source of Twitter notifications may further augment the effect of a social media strategy over generic journal accounts.

  • A social media strategy boosts

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge members of the editorial board of the Journal of the American College of Radiology and others who participated in this project: Geraldine McGinty, Richard Duszak Jr, James Rawson, Kristina Hoque, Arun Krishnaraj, Tirath Patel, Christoph Wald, Frank Lexa, Lee Bennett, Andrew Dixon, Amy Patel, Neil Lall, Jonathan Breslau, and Cheri Cannon.

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Dr. Ruth C. Carlos is Deputy Editor and Dr C. Mathew Hawkins is Associate Editor of the Journal of the American College of Radiology. The other authors have no conflicts of interest related to the material discussed in this article.

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