Abstract Objectives To examine the profile of funded orthodontic articles and compare the citation impact and online visibility of grant-supported versus unfunded publications. Methods All orthodontic articles published in 2021 that included funding acknowledgments were retrieved through a systematic search of the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection. Article, authorship collaboration and funding characteristics were analysed using negative binomial regression to evaluate their association with the number of WoS citations. Altmetric Attention Scores (AASs) and citations for a subsample of funded articles were compared with those of unfunded articles published in the same journals to assess the impact of funding. Results A total of 484 publications were identified, with a median of 6 authors interquartile range (IQR): 4, 3 institutions (IQR: 3), and 8 WoS citations (IQR: 10). More than half of the articles originated from Asia, and nearly one-fourth were published in journals issued by publishers once claimed as predatory. National collaboration, extramural funding, and national public funders accounted for the greatest proportion of publications. The number of collaborating countries and PubMed indexing were significantly associated with more citations (P 0.05), while free article availability and author origin showed weaker associations (P = 0.05 and P = 0.06, respectively). Unfunded publications appeared to receive significantly higher citation counts and AASs compared with funded ones. Conclusions The number of collaborating countries and PubMed indexing were significantly associated with a higher citation impact among grant-supported orthodontic articles. Funding did not appear to significantly influence citation numbers or online attention. The substantial involvement of formerly flagged predatory publishers in the publication of funded orthodontic studies could prompt ethical concerns.
Livas et al. (Thu,) studied this question.