Measuring the social impact of research in Paediatric Dentistry: An Altmetric study

Background Traditional metrics have been extensively used to evaluate the scientific performance. Despite being widespread accepted, citation-based metrics are not able to describe the social impact of research. A diverse metric, Altmetric, was proposed to overcome those limitations. Aim This study aims to analyse the social impact of research in the field of paediatric dentistry and to assess if a correlation exists between the JCR citations, the AAS score, and the recently released Dimensions citation count. Design A bibliometric study was conducted on the four journals related to Paediatric Dentistry listed in the JCR from 2014 to 2017. Descriptive statistics was used to describe the articles and the journals. Pearson's correlation analysis was used to explore the relationship among JCR citations, AAS, and Dimensions. Results The percentage of articles with an AAS presents a huge variability and was significantly higher in the International Journal of Paediatric Dentistry. In our sample, the correlation between the JCR citation count and the AAS was poor in the years 2014, 2015, and 2016 and low in 2017. The correlation between JCR citation and Dimensions citation count was strong. Conclusions The social impact of research in paediatric dentistry can be increased. Dimensions could be an alternative to the JCR. Both the editors and the researcher should change their vision and facilitate the access to research information to scholar and non-scholar audiences.