Ugonabo O, Malik SU, Akbar UA, Zamani Z, Frandah W. Physician-scientists or celebrities? Kardashian-index of gastroenterologists. World J Methodol 2023; 13(4): 337-344 [PMID: 37771873 DOI: 10.5662/wjm.v13.i4.337]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Onyinye Ugonabo, MD, Doctor, Department of Internal Medicine, Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, 1249 15th St, Huntington, WV 25701, United States. onyinyeugonabo99x@gmail.com
Research Domain of This Article
Social Science
Article-Type of This Article
Scientometrics
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Onyinye Ugonabo, Department of Internal Medicine, Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, Huntington, WV 25701, United States
Saad Ullah Malik, Department of Cardiology, Geisinger Medical Center, Danville, PA 17821, United States
Usman Ali Akbar, Department of Internal Medicine, West Virginia University-Camden Clark Medical Center, Parkersburg, WV 26101, United States
Zarlakhta Zamani, Department of Internal Medicine, Centinela Hospital Medical Center, Inglewood, CA 90301, United States
Wesam Frandah, Department of Gastroenterology, Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, Huntington, WV 25701, United States
Author contributions: Malik US performed the analysis and wrote both the methods and results; Akbar AU and Zamani Z assisted in data analysis and findings; Ugonabo O performed a comprehensive literature review, wrote the introduction, discussion, and edited and merged all of the author’s contributions to fit with the Journal’s requirements; Akbar AU assisted in reviewing the manuscript; Frandah W did a final review of the manuscript and made significant contributions before submission to the journal.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None to disclose.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Onyinye Ugonabo, MD, Doctor, Department of Internal Medicine, Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, 1249 15th St, Huntington, WV 25701, United States. onyinyeugonabo99x@gmail.com
Received: April 6, 2023 Peer-review started: April 7, 2023 First decision: May 15, 2023 Revised: July 18, 2023 Accepted: August 29, 2023 Article in press: August 29, 2023 Published online: September 20, 2023 Processing time: 167 Days and 3.8 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Twitter has become the most used social media by physicians to connect with colleagues and disseminate health information. People are prone to believing any information posted on social media to varying degrees. Thus, when do we consider this information factual and the truth? In our study, we used the Kardashian index to estimate whether the Twitter followers of the top 100 gastroenterologists are relatable to their scientific contributions in terms of citation of their scholarly works, and we found the majority of the gastroenterology physician scientists scored < 2 because of inactivity on Twitter and very low number of followers. We postulated that an avenue to mitigate the prevalence of misinformation on social media could emerge by involving a greater number of physician-scientists on this platform. Their engagement, coupled with the dissemination of their research discoveries could contribute significantly to this endeavour.
