Background: The precision of bracket manufacturing is fundamental to ensure the correct expression of the inbuilt information. The objective of this study was to determine the actual tip and torque values of a pool of stainless steel brackets, pre-adjusted according to the MBT prescription values, and to compare these actual values with those stated by the manufacturers in order to test their compliance with the tolerance limits reported in the ISO 27020:2019. Methods: A sample of 360 stainless steel brackets, from 12 different providers, were evaluated. All brackets had a nominal slot size of 0.022 in., belonged to the upper right central incisor, and were manufactured with the metal injection molding technique (MIM). For each provider, three different batches of the same bracket series were tested. A single-blind design was used for bracket coding. Results: Only five systems displayed torque mean values that matched the declared values (p > 0.05). Only one system did not respect the tolerance limits established in the ISO 27020:2019 norm. The tip values were different from those declared in seven of the assessed systems; however, none exceeded the tolerance limits. The inter-batch variability in most cases was not statistically significant. Conclusions: In most of the assessed systems, there can be a difference between the actual and the declared torque values, while tip information is usually accurately incorporated into the bracket slot. Lack of precision in the manufacturing process can reduce the efficacy of the appliance and force the clinician to compensate for dimensional inaccuracy through wire bending.

Background: Online attention is a relevant research feature that can be related to its societal impact. Online attention in the field of legal medicine was explored as well as the relation between citation count and the Altmetric Attention Score (AAS). Methods: A search was performed, through the free Dimensions app, during September 2020, on the journals related to legal medicine listed in the 2019 edition of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). The 200 published items with the highest AAS were retrieved and screened for bibliometric data. Articles with related citations were gathered from Web of Science (WOS), Scopus, and Dimensions. Results: Seventy-five percent of the articles were published by five of the selected journals. Twitter and news outlets were the most prevalent Altmetric resources. Additionally, 73.5% of the articles were published between 2013 and 2020. The most frequent topics were the ones related to toxicology and pharmacology, followed by criminalistics and law and bioethics. A poor correlation was found between the citations in WOS, Dimensions, and Scopus and the AAS. Conclusions: The online attention on legal medicine-related topics can be considered high on social media. The high number of news outlets is a distinctive feature of the most discussed articles in legal medicine. In this field of medicine, citation-based metrics combined with Altmetric can allow a broader evaluation of research findings but it should be underlined that, when measuring very different aspects of a published item, the scores in classic citation databases and Altmetric do not have a direct relation.

Background: Alternative metrics have been proposed to estimate the impact of research on the academic and social environment. The objective of the current study was to analyze the longitudinal behavior of Altmetric resources related to online engagement in orthodontic research and to explore their correlation with citations over time. Methods: The Dimensions App was searched in December 2019 and December 2021 for published items belonging to orthodontic journals listed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) from 2014 to 2018. Items with an AAS (Altmetric Attention Score) equal to or greater than one were selected and screened for data related to authorship and publication. The breakdown of the different Altmeric resources was collected in 2019 and updated in 2021. Citations were retrieved from Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus at the same time interval. Results: The best performing journals were Progress in Orthodontics and the European Journal of Orthodontics at both time points, with a mean AAS per published item of 1.74 and 1.63, respectively, in 2021. The topics with the highest online engagement display a change over time, while the study design remained randomized clinical trials (RCTs) in both observations. Tweets, Facebook posts, and blogs showed a very slight increase over time, while News Outlets, patent data, and policy sources longitudinally showed a significant increase. No or poor correlation was found between altmetrics and citation except for Mendeley reader count. Conclusions: Tweets, Facebook, and Blog mentions can be considered attention trackers. News Outlets, patents, and policy sources are time dependent data. Mendeley reader count, can help to identify the article with a future citation potential.