There is strong consensus in the clinical trial community that blinding is an important issue in randomized controlled trials. At present grossly incomplete reporting of procedures and the use of any assessment for blinding still prevails. The term ‘double-blind’ has almost become a convention without any checks or balances. Also there is a lack of consensus on quantitative procedures for evaluating the success of blinding in the literature. This article reviews statistical methods of blinding assessment along with software options, and discusses some of the most pressing issues surrounding the acquisition, interpretation, and reporting of blinding data. Finally, it proposes a sample blinding assessment protocol to address some of these issues.

Introduction. In recent years, several controversial reports of the correlation between altmetric score and citations have been published (range: ‐0.2 to 0.8). We conducted a meta‐analysis to provide an in‐depth statistical analysis of the correlation between altmetric score and number of citations in the field of health sciences. Methods. Three online databases (Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed) were systematically searched, without language restrictions, from the earliest publication date available through February 29, 2020, using the keywords “altmetric,” “citation,” and “correlation.” Grey literature was also searched via WorldCat, Open Grey, and Google Scholar (first 100 hits only). All studies in the field of health sciences that reported on this correlation were included. Effect sizes were calculated using Fisher’s z transformation of correlations. Subgroup analyses based on citation source and sampling methods were performed. Results. From 27 included articles, 8 articles comprise several independent studies. The total sample size was 9,943 articles comprised of 35 studies. The overall pooled effect size was 0.19 (95% confidence interval 0.13 to 0.26). Bivariate partial prediction of interaction between effect size, citation source, and sampling method showed a greater effect size with Web of Science compared with Scopus and Dimensions. Egger’s regression showed a marginally nonsignificant publication bias (p = 0.055), and trim‐and‐fill analysis estimated one missing study in this meta‐analysis. Conclusion. In health sciences, currently altmetric score has a positive but weak correlation with number of citations (pooled correlation = 0.19, 95% C.I 0.12 to 0.25). We emphasize on future examinations to assess changes of correlation pattern between altmetric score and citations over time.

Highlights Altmetric data of all dental articles and journals in 2015. Demonstrates that the British Dental Journal had the first rank, followed by Journal of Dental Research, Journal of Clinical Periodontology and Journal of the American Dental Association. Shows that Mendeley readers, Twitter, Facebook walls, news outlets and bloggers were the most popular Altmetric data resources.