The online attention to orthodontic research: an Altmetric analysis of the orthodontic journals indexed in the journal citation reports from 2014 to 2018

Background To 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). Method The 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. Results The 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 andr= 0.1508,p< .05). The correlation between citations count and Mendeley reader (r= 0.6879 andr= 0.697,p< .05) was moderate. Conclusions Few 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.