Dissemination patterns of Cochrane reviews on nutrition and physical activity using Altmetric data: a bibliographic study

TL;DR

This study examines how Cochrane reviews on nutrition and physical activity are shared online and in scientific circles, finding that social media and citations are key to their reach.

Contribution

The study is the first to analyze dissemination patterns of Cochrane reviews on nutrition and physical activity using Altmetric data.

Findings

Most Cochrane reviews on nutrition and physical activity received attention via social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Higher online attention was strongly associated with higher scientific attention and more languages used in plain language summaries.

Reviews published earlier and those including more studies or meta-analyses had higher scientific attention.

Abstract

Cochrane reviews on nutrition and physical activity (PA) are highly relevant to scientists, practitioners, and the general public. It is important to investigate the dissemination patterns of these reviews to improve the uptake of their findings in practice. The aims of this study were (1) to describe the online and scientific attention towards Cochrane reviews on nutrition and PA using Altmetric data and (2) to investigate the associations between Altmetric data and review characteristics.

This cross-sectional, bibliographic study used data from 249 Cochrane reviews on nutrition and PA for healthy or at-risk populations that were published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews from inception until May 2024. Review characteristics and open-access Altmetric data were extracted and analysed using relative frequencies. The associations among Altmetric Attention Scores (a measure of online attention), Dimensions Citations Scores (a measure of scientific attention), and review characteristics were computed using binary logistic regression analysis.

The 249 Cochrane reviews were published over a period of 25 years (1999–2024), included 0–195 studies, conducted a meta-analysis (80%), and had a plain language summary (PLS) available in 2–17 languages. Dissemination occurred via social media, including predominantly Twitter/X (n = 242), Facebook (n = 210), and Wikipedia (n = 172). Online attention based on the Altmetric Attention Scores ranged between 3 and 4111 (51% of reviews had scores between 3 and 48). Scientific attention based on the Dimensions Citations Scores ranged between 0 and 2700 (50% of reviews had scores between 0 and 81). Higher online attention was associated with higher scientific attention (odds ratio, OR = 11.14, 95% confidence interval, CI: 5.08–24.40) and more PLS languages (OR = 1.38, CI: 1.22–1.57). Higher scientific attention was associated with higher online attention (OR = 11.06, CI: 4.96–24.64), older publication year (OR = 0.12, CI: 0.06–0.27), more studies included in the review (OR = 4.13, CI: 1.90–8.98), and a meta-analysis conducted in the review (OR = 6.32, CI: 2.42–16.53).

There was generally high online and scientific attention towards Cochrane reviews on nutrition and PA, mainly due to mentions in the social media and academic citations. Future studies need to investigate if higher online and scientific attention could enhance evidence uptake from Cochrane reviews in practice.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13643-026-03127-8.

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