La dermatologie académique française sur Twitter

Abstract

Dermatology journals and professional organizations are gradually opening up to social networks. We reviewed the activity of key accounts of dermatology journals and societies on Twitter and compared them specifically to the activity of French accounts. This was an observational study on two given days, December 1, 2018 and May 3, 2019, involving 21 Twitter accounts of journals, of which all 17 were in dermatology, and 19 accounts of professional dermatology organizations, including 5 French accounts. The following data was collected: number of subscriptions, number of subscribers, total number of tweets, number of monthly tweets, and account activity (number of "likes", percentage of increase in subscribers and messages between the two studied periods). For the journals, we collected the 2017 Journal Impact Factor (WebofScience). The most popular dermatology journals on Twitter were JAMADermatology, JAAD and the BritishJournalofDermatology. There was a positive correlation between the impact factor and the number of subscribers (P=0.009, Pearson 0.714) and the number of tweets (P=0.001, Pearson 0.815), as well as a correlation between the number of subscribers and the number of tweets (P<0.001, Pearson 0.828). The American Dermatology Association, with two accounts, had 21,800 subscribers and 9814 subscribers. The Spanish Dermatology Association was second (6124 subscribers), ahead of the British (4833 subscribers). For France, the account with the most subscribers was that of the Union of Dermatologists-Venereologists (952 subscribers). The French Society of Dermatology had a modest 163 subscribers but was active, with a 47% increase in the number of tweets and a 49.5% increase in the number of subscribers. We found a positive correlation between the number of subscribers and the total number of tweets (P=0.006, Pearson 0.602) as well as the number of "likes" (P=0.02, Pearson 0.530). There was a correlation between the number of tweets and the number of "likes" (P<0.001, Pearson=0.897). There are many benefits for journals and professional associations in being present on social networks. However, we feel that there is striking under-use by French dermatology, as evidenced in the example of Twitter.