Sources of Attention

Altmetric track a unique range of online sources to capture the conversations relating to research outputs

Relevant, reliable and transparent

altmetric-sourcesWe monitor the following sources for mentions of research outputs to bring you the most relevant and up to date picture of the online activity and discussion:

  • Public policy documents

We track and text mine a range of public policy sources globally, looking for references to published research.

  • Mainstream media

Our mainstream media tracking offers a unique insight into where a piece of research has attracted high-profile coverage from over 2,000 outlets around the world.

  • Online reference managers

Displayed on the details pages but not included in the Altmetric score are the number of Mendeley users who have saved the research to their library. You can view a breakdown of the demographics (location, discipline, etc) of these users on the summary tab details page.

  • Post-publication peer-review platforms

Also included in our coverage are evaluations of individual outputs from contributors to open post-publication peer-review forums Pubpeer and Publons.

  • Wikipedia

We currently track the English language version of Wikipedia for citations to published research, with new mentions or edits being identified automatically.

  • Open Syllabus Project

Data from the Open Syllabus Project is displayed on the details pages of individual books to showcase where those titles appear in the course syllabi of over 4,000 institutions around the world.

  • Patents

Using data from IFI CLAIMS®, we track references found in patents filed with nine international patents offices so that users can understand the global economic impacts of published research.

  • Blogs

Our system scans a manually curated list of over 9,000 academic and non-academic blogs every day.

  • Citations

We provide Dimensions citations data in the Explorer for Publishers, Explorer for Institutions and on details pages for outputs that have received attention from the other sources we track. Web of Science (where licensed) citation information is also available within both Explorer platforms. Users are able to see the total citation count and 3 citing articles in the Altmetric details page for the item, and click through to view the full record.

  • Research highlights

Recommendations of individual research outputs from Faculty Opinions.

  • Social Media

We track a range of social networks for mentions of research outputs – all of these are then displayed on the details page for complete transparency. Networks we track include:

– Facebook (mentions on curated list of public pages only)

– Twitter

– LinkedIn, Google+, Sin Weibo and Pinterest (historical data only – they no longer supply an open feed)

  • Multimedia and other online platforms

We also monitor a selection of other sites and community forums:

– YouTube

– Reddit

– Q&A (stack overflow)

Our sources list is expanding all the time. Visit our knowledge base for details of when we started tracking each type of source.

Got a new source you think we should be tracking?

Fill in this form and let us know! We’ll take a look and add it if we can. (Note that for blogs and mainstream media sites we need an RSS feed to be able to index the source.)