In case imaging leaders needed yet another reason to take advantage of social media, radiology journals with an active Twitter presence have much higher Impact Factors than those without one, according to a recent study published by the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR).

Brendan S. Kelly, MB, BCh, BAO, department of radiology at St. Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin, and colleagues examined the Twitter use of the top 50 journals in the “Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Medical Imaging” category, as ranked by InCites Journal Citation Reports 2014. Fourteen of the journals had their own Twitter profiles, and another 25 were associated with societies that had their own Twitter profiles, meaning there were 11 journals not using Twitter at all. (The authors looked at other social media platforms as well. Twenty-nine journals had Facebook profiles, nine had LinkedIn profiles and three had their own YouTube accounts.)

The mean Impact Factor for radiology journals with Twitter profiles was 3.37, while the Impact Factor of journals with no Twitter profile was just 2.14. In addition, between 2013 and 2014, journals with Twitter profiles saw increases in their mean Impact Factor of 19 percent, while journals without Twitter profiles only saw an increase in mean Impact Factor of 5 percent. Kelly et al. described this difference as “statistically significant.”

“Twitter can play a useful role in helping radiologists stay up to date with the latest developments in their areas of expertise,” the authors wrote. “Also, given that radiology is an image-based specialty, it is uniquely placed to benefit from the potential to share multimedia via Twitter. Although we did not analyze the individual content of tweets from radiology journals, we observed that a large proportion are being used to provide followers with web links to published articles, educational content or interesting cases.”

Kelly and colleagues used the JACR as an example to show how creative uses of Twitter can directly lead to higher readership numbers.

“In our study, we found that JACR was the most interactive of the journals with its followers on Twitter,” the authors wrote. “One of the ways JACR has engaged with its readers on Twitter has been to schedule ‘tweet chat sessions’ on the basis of recently published material with invited moderators to provide expertise and facilitate discussion. After the initiation of these Twitter sessions, JACR experienced an increase in readership of its online-published articles by 31 percent and an increase in visits to its website by 25 percent.”

The authors added that their study did have limitations. The sample size was small, for instance, and there was “difficulty in separating cause from effect.”

“It may be possible that journals with higher Impact Factors were more likely to have Twitter profiles rather than these journals’ Twitter profiles contributing significantly to their increased Impact Factors,” they wrote. “However, we believe that because of the definite upward trend in Impact Factor observed and the significantly higher rate of Impact Factor growth experienced by the journals that use Twitter, it is certainly possible that joining and using Twitter contributes to improvement in Impact Factor.”

Previous Radiology Business articles related to social media can be read here, here, here and here.