The Social Media Impact Factor

Clinical Implications•Social media may have a negligible impact on traditional impact factor metrics.•Social media has a significant impact on nontraditional public engagement metrics such as Altmetric.•Interest in dermatology on social media platforms is high and may represent an opportunity for public engagement •Social media may have a negligible impact on traditional impact factor metrics.•Social media has a significant impact on nontraditional public engagement metrics such as Altmetric.•Interest in dermatology on social media platforms is high and may represent an opportunity for public engagement Analysis of research papers posted on X (formally known as Twitter) showed a statistically significant effect on Altmetrics but not citation rate. A group of 11 researchers with a mean follower account of 20,310 performed an experiment over the course of 3 years, where they would tweet 1 randomly chosen paper from 11 life-sciences journals shortly after its publication every month for 10 months (Branch et al., 2024Branch T.A. Cȏté I.M. David S.R. Drew J.A. LaRue M. Márquez M.C. et al.Controlled experiment finds no detectable citation bump from Twitter promotion.PLoS One. 2024; 19e0292201Google Scholar). Notably, this study was conceived and carried out prior to the transition of Twitter into X. Analytics were then obtained from both Altmetric and the publishers regarding these 110 tweeted articles and nontweeted/control articles 30 days after the tweet and then 3 years subsequently. The Altmetric score of tweeted articles was 68% higher than that of the control, and this difference continued to increase to 81% higher on average after 3 years. This means that more people were aware of and downloaded tweeted papers than would have done otherwise. Citation rate of tweeted articles was 6% higher in Web of Science and 12% higher in Google Scholar, but this was not statistically significant. The findings of this study are perhaps unsurprising, given that citations accumulate when other scientists in one's field (or an adjacent area) publish research related to one's own. Therefore, citation rate will inherently be limited by the global interest and funding in a given field. However, social media is not limited in the same way, which generates potential for far greater engagement with a broader and predominantly lay audience. As the authors of the study say, social media is encouraged as a means to escape the ivory tower to engage with the public, the press, and policymakers. Alternative metric scores such as the Altmetric attention scores are a means of quantifying this impact beyond a scientist's immediate research community. The relatively increased Altmetric score of tweeted articles in this study demonstrates the power of social media to successfully engage and disseminate research beyond the ivory tower. There has been a generally recognized decline in the use of X (formerly known as Twitter) by scientists in recent years (Vidal Valero, 2023Vidal Valero M. Thousands of scientists are cutting back on Twitter, seeding angst and uncertainty.Nature. 2023; 620: 482-484Google Scholar), and it remains unclear which social media platform presents a viable alternative. Threads was launched in July 2023 as a text-based microblogging site and gained over 100 million users in its first 5 days and was widely seen as Meta's answer to X. It is integrated with Instagram and enables carrying over of followers from Instagram. Of note, for dermatology, Instagram is an important platform for the field, and many dermatologist influencers or dermfluencers have incredibly large followings there. As of May 2024, Muneeb Shah(@doctorly), Dr Shereene Idriss (@shereeneidriss), and Dr Lindsey Zubritsky (@dermguru) all have over 1 million followers apiece. Notably, Shah is also the most followed dermatologist on TikTok (under the account @dermdoctor) with 18 million followers and also has over 2.8 million subscribers on YouTube. Successful social media influencing requires development of expertise in social media algorithms and trends, and a knack for monitoring and generating engagement. Big dermfluencers combine this knowhow with their established authority in the field of dermatology to generate powerful impact for themselves and brands they choose to align with (Kilbane, 2024Kilbane B. The tricky business of being a TikTok derm.https://www.allure.com/story/dermatologists-and-social-mediaDate: 2024Date accessed: April 8, 2024Google Scholar). Thus far, there has been relatively little engagement with the dermatology influencer niche from the dermatology and skin science scientific publishing community. Given the collective size of these dermfluencer platforms, collaboration may represent a unique opportunity to share skin science and dermatology research to an exceptionally large and dermatology-interested public audience. Xinyi Du-Harpur: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5738-8734 The author states no conflict of interest.