## 4 Discussion
This finding is interesting and highlights how Altmetric resources can indicate the tendency for an article to be cited, but not being mentioned on social media platforms is not per se an indication of a low citation tendency. As a matter of fact, in our sample, some of the WOS top cited articles received few or no mentions, and we could find poor or no correlation between future citations and mentions in Altmetric resources (Supplementary Figure S1). Our results are consistent with what was previously reported by [PERSON] and [PERSON] in 2018 but in disagreement with what was reported by [PERSON] et al. in 2023, that observed a positive correlation between citation counts and AAS, Tweets, and Mendeley readers count [18; 31]. When analyzing [PERSON] data, it should be underlined that they included articles published only in 2018 and they included only original articles that usually get more citations than other published items that were included by other studies in the orthodontic field [18; 32]. Although this is the first study to explore this type of correlation and we could not find data to contrast our findings. However, when citations and altmetrics mentions are compared with a cross-sectional approach, similar findings were reported in Emergency Medicine or Ophthalmology about the correlation between Twitter mentions and citations in Scopus (Spearman r ranging from 0.30 to 0.42) [30; 33]. The findings for Facebook posts or News Outlets were also similar with poor to moderate correlation. The results appear in line with other authors who reported a weak or no correlation between Altmetric score and citations [34; 35]. Altmetric may be able to gauge the societal impact of the items published in orthodontic journals and the online dissemination of research, despite its inherent limitation. It might provide a deeper understanding of the impacts of research when combined with conventional measures. It should be underlined that measuring very different aspects of the scores in the classic citations database and Altmeric do not have a direct relation. In our sample the number of the Mendeley reader, it was the only resource that displayed a moderate and significant correlation with future citations, this result is in agreement with what was reported by other authors [36] and was highlighted previously in the orthodontic field [32]. Mendeley readers count seems to be within its limitations a useful indicator to highlight the published items with future citation potential [36]. The negative fluctuations that especially involved Twitter and Mendeley data, over the observation period, raise a concern about data quality or accuracy. [PERSON] et al. in 2021 reported that errors in Facebook posts or Tweet attributable to the user, the platform, or the altmetric aggregator could involve 11.2 to 17.2% of the data [37]. Their findings can justify the fluctuation present in our sample and highlight how these databases can be considered reliable, although there is still room for further improvement. Lastly, it is interesting to discuss the role of social research networks as ResearchGate or Academia.edu, both launched in 2008, have been able to attract the interest of an increasing number of users among researchers and academics over the last decade reaching respectively 20 million users and 175 million users. They offer citations count using a similar dynamic to classic citations, and they also provide alternative metrics based on mentions, reads, recommendations, downloads, or acknowledgments. Although these social networks do not track altmetrics, they allow authors to upload preprints enabling them to provide early impact evidence for their new research outputs. Social research networks can help increase the visibility of researchers, helping younger members of research teams and researchers working in countries with limited access to literature databases to draw attention to their work. Some authors reported that posting on a social research network site attracts more citations than posting on other parts of the public web [38].