Social Media Improves Cardiothoracic Surgery Literature Dissemination: Results of a Randomized Trial.

The Thoracic Surgery Social Media Network (TSSMN) represents a collaborative effort of leading journals in cardiothoracic surgery to highlight publications via social media, specifically Twitter.

We conducted a prospective randomized trial to determine the effect of scheduled tweeting on non-traditional bibliometrics of dissemination.A total of 112 representative original articles (2017-2018) were selected and randomized 1:1 to an intervention group to be tweeted via TSSMN or a control (non-tweeted) group.

Four articles per day were tweeted by TSSMN delegates for 14 days. Primary endpoints included change in Altmetric score pre and post-tweet compared to controls. Secondary endpoints included change in Twitter analytics day one post-tweet and day seven post-tweet for each article compared to baseline.Tweeting via TSSMN significantly improved article Altmetric scores (Pre-tweet 1 vs. Post-tweet 8, p<0.001), Mendeley reads (Pre-tweet 1 vs. Post-tweet 3, p<0.001), and Twitter impressions (Day 1 post-tweet 1599 vs. Day 7 post-tweet 2296, p<0.001).

Subgroup analysis demonstrates that incorporating photos into the tweets trended towards increased link clicks to the full-text article (p=0.08) whereas tweeting at 1pmEST and 9pmEST generated the highest and lowest audience reach (p=0.022), respectively.

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Articles published in adult cardiac surgery achieved the highest change in Altmetric score (p=0.028), Mendeley reads (p=0.028) and were more likely to be retweeted (p=0.042) than those published on education, general thoracic surgery, and congenital surgery.Social media highlights of scholarly literature via TSSMN Twitter activity improves article Altmetric scores, Mendeley reads, and Twitter analytics, with dissemination to a greater audience.