Our sources

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

Relevant, reliable, and transparent

We 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.

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.

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.

Currently tracking:

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

– Twitter

Historical Sources (they no longer supply an open feed):

– Google+, Sina Weibo and Pinterest

Wikipedia

We currently track the 31 different language versions of Wikipedia for citations to published research, with new mentions or edits being identified automatically.

Open Syllabus Project

We have historical data from the Open Syllabus Project that 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.

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.

Mainstream media

Our mainstream media tracking offers a unique insight into where a piece of research has attracted high-profile coverage from over 4,000 outlets around the world.

Post-publication peer-review platforms

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

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.

Research highlights

Recommendations of individual research outputs from Faculty Opinions.

Multimedia and other online platforms

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

– YouTube

– Reddit

– Q&A (stack overflow)