Research that sparked attention on the social Web in 2020: an Altmetric analysis of “top 100” articles

Purpose The study aims to analyse the “Top 100” articles that were most discussed on social media in 2020. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on the data retrieved from the Altmetric database. The data were tabulated in Microsoft Excel for further analysis. Moreover, articles were examined at an individual level to retrieve author affiliations for research collaboration analysis. Findings The most discussed article on social media for the year 2020 has an Article Attention Score (AAS) of 34775. COVID-19 related studies have dominated the list and it comes as no surprise since COVID-19 became the focal point of many researchers and publishers ever since the pandemic started. These articles have been published across 63 journals with the highest contributions from reputed journals such as Nature, PLoS ONE and Science . The majority (46%) of articles has been published in open access. Finally, the majority of publications are a result of research collaboration. Originality/value This study reflects the societal impact of research that could be used as an indicator of research performance.