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Research papers make top 100 most discussed research of 2018

Press release issued: 11 December 2018

Four published papers co-authored by University of Bristol researchers are ranked in this year’s Altmetric Top 100 papers.

Every year data science company, Altmetric, release an annual ranking of the research articles that generate the most international online attention and discussion. This provides a picture of the influence and reach of academic work.

Research co-authored by Bristol academics hit as high as number 12 in the ‘2018 Altmetric Top 100’ released today [Tuesday 11 December]. Ranked articles included three health studies and one on atmospheric pollutants.

The four articles with Bristol co-authors in the top 100 are:

#12        Comparative efficacy and acceptability of 21 antidepressant drugs for the acute treatment of adults with major depressive disorder: a systematic review and network meta-analysis in The Lancet, February 2018

#15        Risk thresholds for alcohol consumption: combined analysis of individual-participant data for 599 912 current drinkers in 83 prospective studies in The Lancet, April 2018

#27        A randomized trial of epinephrine in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in New England Journal of Medicine, July 2018

#96        An unexpected and persistent increase in global emissions of ozone-depleting CFC-11 in Nature, May 2018

Dr Matthew Rigby, from the School of Chemistry and co-author on the list’s 96th paper, said: “It’s been really exciting to see this work receive so much attention.”

The Nature paper suggests that China is to blame for the recent slowdown in the global eradication of ozone-depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons.

Dr Rigby added: “We showed that at least some of these new emissions are coming from eastern Asia, but the precise location of any new source or sources is not yet known.”

Jerry Nolan, Honorary Professor from the Bristol Medical School: Translational Health Sciences was “delighted” that the trial examining the side-affects of adrenaline injections in heart attack patients, came 27 in the list.

He said: “This study showed that in comparison with placebo, adrenaline resulted in more hearts being restarted and more patients being discharged alive from hospital. But there was no difference in the number of survivors with favourable neurological outcome and more survivors in the adrenaline group had severe brain injury.”

Altmetric collate what’s being said online, on mainstream sources such as newspapers, social media and blogs, but also include other more scholarly forums. They use an algorithm that weights each source according to its relative audience reach, to score the attention each article receives.

Catherine Williams, COO of, Altmetric, said: “From climate change to misinformation and diets, the most widely shared and discussed research focuses on global challenges that affect us all.

“Encouragingly, the levels of attention we see here demonstrates that expert knowledge still plays a very central role in our shared understanding of these issues.”

View the full Top 100 list at: https://www.altmetric.com/top100/2018/ #altmetrictop100

Further information

Methodology
Data was collated on the 15 November 2018, for articles published from 15 November 2017 onwards. Author and institutional data was collated via a mixture of automatic matching with data from Dimensions and manual curation. Altmetric Attention Scores shown on the Top 100 site were captured at the time of collation, and may have changed slightly since. For more information about the Altmetric Top 100, visit our website

About Altmetric
Altmetric's mission is to track and analyze the online activity around scholarly literature. We collate what people are saying about published research outputs in scholarly and non-scholarly forums like the mainstream media, policy documents, social networks, and blogs to provide a more robust picture of the influence and reach of scholarly work. Altmetric works with some of the biggest publishers, funders, and institutions around the world to deliver this data in an accessible and reliable format.

Altmetric is supported by Digital Science. Find out more at altmetric.com and follow us on Twitter @altmetric

Digital Science is a technology company working to make research more efficient. We invest in, nurture and support innovative businesses and technologies that make all parts of the research process more open and effective. We believe that together, we can help researchers make a difference. Visit digital-science.com

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