Sharing and assessing the impact of orthodontic research on social media: The case of altmetrics

In the age of web 2.0 technologies, social media platforms facilitate rapid communication, direct spread to large numbers of users, within and beyond scholarly communities, as well as discussion of the shared information between posters and followers. Scholars participate in scientific conversations using mainly blogs, social and professional networking sites, video sharing platforms, forums, and content aggregators or reference management software. Current evidence suggests a likely increase of citation counts of research work following dissemination through specialized social media applications for academics. Given the benefits of mediated research communication, social media use in orthodontics needs to be reinforced and keep pace with other medical specialties. This article provides critical insights into the adoption of social media in scholarly communication and the evaluation of the impact of research outputs shared online by means of the so-called altmetrics or social media metrics.