Positive Correlation Between Social Media Utilization by Orthopaedic Journals and Impact Factor

Social media use has exploded in popularity over the past decade with over 1.5 billion users on Facebook and 320 million users on Twitter. The aim of this study was to analyze the use of social media by orthopaedic journals and determine whether a relationship exists between social media followers and journal impact factor. METHODS: The Clarivate Analytics Impact Factor tool was used to identify all orthopaedic journals with a 2022 impact factor of greater than 1.5. We then conducted a query on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to determine which programs had pages on each platform. RESULTS: Seventeen journals were included across all orthopaedic subspecialties. Of the 17 journals, 14 (82.4%) had a Facebook page, eight (47%) had an Instagram page, 15 (88.2%) had a Twitter account, and 8 (47%) had a LinkedIn profile. When compiling the number of followers by social media platform, Twitter had the most (177,543), followed by Facebook (149,388), Instagram (81,739), and LinkedIn (77,459). We found a significant correlation between the number of social media followers and journal impact factor (Pearson correlation coefficient [PCC] = 0.67; P = 0.003). When analyzing each social media platform independently, we found a significant correlation between the number of Facebook and Twitter followers and journal impact factor (PCC = 0.54; P = 0.02 and PCC = 0.80; P < 0.001, respectively). DISCUSSION: We have shown a notable association between the number of social media followers and a journal's impact factor. With the increasing shift toward online distribution, orthopaedic journals may use our data when evaluating their social media strategy to maintain and potentially increase their exposure and potentially their impact factor.