Barack Obama’s research on US healthcare reform – the first academic article to be published by a sitting US president – has topped a list of the most popular online papers of the year.

The article, “United States health care reform: progress to date and next steps”, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in July, took pole position in a top 100 list compiled by Altmetric, a London start-up that tracks and analyses the online activity around scholarly literature.

The paper from the outgoing US president resulted in the highest Altmetric “attention score” ever tracked, 8,063, compared with a score of 4,912 for the second-most popular article.

The term “altmetrics” describes the practice of rating papers using “alternative metrics”, such as mentions on social media networking sites, rather than, for example, citations in other journals.

Other research that caught the public’s attention in 2016 includes an article on medical errors being the third leading cause of death in the US (second), a paper on mastering the board game Go (ninth), and a report finding that the ease with which we tell lies grows with repetition (18th).

The top 20 most popular academic papers of 2016

The full top 100 list, along with more information about the methodology, is available at Altmetric.com.

ellie.bothwell@tesglobal.com