Abstract
BackgroundTo describe the impact of research, beyond the limits of the academic environment, Altmetric, a new social and traditional media metric was proposed. The aims of this study were to analyze the online activity related to orthodontic research via Altmetric and to assess if a correlation exists among citations, Mendeley reader count, and the AAS (Altmetric Attention Score).MethodThe Dimensions App was searched for articles published in the orthodontic journals listed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) throughout the years 2014 to 2018. The articles with a positive AAS were collected and screened for data related to publication and authorship. The articles with an AAS higher than 5 were screened for research topic and study design. Citation counts were harvested from Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus.ResultsThe best performing journals were Progress in Orthodontics and the European Journal of Orthodontics with a mean AAS per published item of 1.455 and 1.351, respectively and the most prevalent sources were Tweets and Facebook mentions. The most prevalent topic was Oral Health-Related Quality of Life (OHRQOL) and the study design was systematic reviews. The correlation between the AAS and the citations in both WOS and Scopus was poor (r = 0.1463 and r = 0.1508, p < .05). The correlation between citations count and Mendeley reader (r = 0.6879 and r = 0.697, p < .05) was moderate.ConclusionsFew journals displayed a high level of web activity. Journals and editors should enhance online dissemination of the scientific outputs. The authors should report the impact of the findings to the general public in a convenient way to facilitate online dissemination but to avoid an opportunistic use of the research outputs. Despite the lack of correlation, a combination of the citation count and the AAS can give a more comprehensive assessment of research impact.
Highlights
To describe the impact of research, beyond the limits of the academic environment, Altmetric, a new social and traditional media metric was proposed
The authors should report the impact of the findings to the general public in a convenient way to facilitate online dissemination but to avoid an opportunistic use of the research outputs
Our study presents some limitations in the literature search since we only analyzed the articles published in the orthodontic journals listed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and we did not include all those publications related to orthodontics which were published in non-specialty journals and those publications published in specialty journals not listed in the JCR such as the Journal of Orthodontics or the Journal of Clinical Orthodontics
Summary
To describe the impact of research, beyond the limits of the academic environment, Altmetric, a new social and traditional media metric was proposed. Citations metrics as the impact factor or the h-factor, among others, have been extensively used as a measure of quality of the published research items. The assumption behind this approach is that citations are a direct and reliable indicator of the scientific impact of a paper or a journal in its scientific field [1]. Fail to describe the impact of research beyond the limits of the academic environment
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