Just drag the "Altmetric it" link above to your bookmarks bar (nothing happening? Check out the installation instructions). Click on it while viewing a paper and you'll see a box pop-up containing information about the article from Altmetric.
To install the bookmarklet just drag it into your browser's bookmark bar - typically this is underneath the address bar.
Altmetric it ← Drag this to your bookmarks bar
All set? Great - take it for a spin! Here are some example articles to try it out on, just visit them then click on the "Altmetric it" bookmark you just added:
Nothing happening when you drag the link? Confusingly Chrome will let you drag the bookmarklet to the area where the icons for your extensions appear (to the right of the address box). This isn't the bookmarks bar, which is normally underneath the address box and may be turned off by default. To fix this, go to the View menu and select "Always Show Bookmarks Bar".
If you can't see a bookmark bar on Firefox go to the View -> Toolbars menu and check Bookmarks Toolbar.
Caveats! We have them. When we said any paper we may have been exaggerating. We're working up to that but right now:
I'm using Internet Explorer / Opera, why doesn't it work?
Sorry! Right now the bookmarklet will only work on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. We'll be supporting other browsers very soon.
If not, drop Euan a line letting him know what browser and operating system you're using and what link you're trying the bookmarklet out on.
What's the number in the middle of the donut graphic?
This is the Altmetric score. The Altmetric score is a quantitative measure of the quantity and quality of attention that an article has received. Check out the help page for details.
Lots of articles score 0. What's the deal?
Yes - not every article is mentioned in social media, a newspaper or magazine, just like not every article is cited. In fact the majority of articles published in 2012 won't have a score over 0.
The actual percentage of articles with a positive Altmetric score varies depending on the field and specific journal. In general, high impact and OA journals do better than paywalled or low impact journals.
Around 25% of all papers added to PubMed each month have some sort of mention three months later. Conversely, articles in Nature, Science, PLoS One and other better known journals will have much higher coverage.
I tweeted about my paper when it got published last year but that doesn't turn up in the metrics. What gives?
Altmetric only started collecting data in July 2011, so the bookmarklet works best on recent papers.
You'll still see blog, Facebook and research highlight metrics about older articles but the number of twitter mentions will always be 0.
If you know there's recent activity around an article and it's not showing up then let us know.
I just blogged about an article. How long will it take to show up with the bookmarklet?
Tweets should show up within a couple of hours. Other sources can take up to a couple of days.
I keep seeing a "this journal isn't supported yet" message. What's going on?
To work properly the bookmarklet must be able to local a unique identifier for the article you're on, typically a DOI. Not all publishers store the DOI or articles in a standard location and so we have to add support for them on an individual basis. Furthermore not all papers have DOIs, especially if they're more then ten years old.
On the plus side we're adding support for new journals all the time. Feel free to request support for specific journals from @altmetric on Twitter.
Note for developers: even if the bookmarklet doesn't support DOI lookup for a particular journal the article level metrics data may still be available through the API.
I'm not using Internet Explorer or Opera but I'm still having trouble
Drop Euan a line letting him know what browser and operating system you're using and what link you're trying the bookmarklet out on.
Where does the data come from?
The article level metrics data is collected by Altmetric.com. The raw numbers are then made available for free - Altmetric sustains itself by selling more detailed data and analysis tools to publishers, institutions and academic societies.
Can I have the raw data? I've got this great idea...
Go for it! Altmetric It uses the free article level metrics API at http://api.altmetric.com.
