200 million mentions: Altmetric has now officially tracked over 200 million mentions of nearly 20 million research outputs

Here at Altmetric, we’ve started 2022 as we mean to go on, by reaching a huge milestone! 

We have now officially tracked over 200 million mentions of nearly 20 million research outputs. 

These 200 million mentions have come from a huge variety of sources, including social media, blogs, Wikipedia, policy documents, patents, news outlets and more!

We are constantly working to expand our coverage, add sources and discover new mentions. During 2021 we made some fantastic additions…

Expanding Wikipedia Coverage

At the beginning of 2021, we had implemented tracking for the English, Finnish and Swedish versions of Wikipedia. However, we are now tracking mentions across 12 different versions of Wikipedia. 

During 2021 we added tracking for mentions on Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish Wikipedia. If a research output is mentioned across pages and posts on any of these Wikipedia versions, these mentions will be picked up and appear in Details Pages, Badges and Attention Scores. To date, we have collected over 6.5 million mentions from Wikipedia.

We are looking forward to adding even more languages to our Wikipedia coverage in the coming months, so stay tuned for our announcements. 

Expanding Policy Source Coverage 

Having visibility over whether a research output has been mentioned in a policy source document provides valuable insights into the societal impact of a piece of research. 

During the past year, Altmetric has added tracking for lots of different policy sources. We made some great and varied additions, from multinational organizations like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Universities Association, to rich local sources such as the Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services (Sweden), Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (Ireland), Pharmaceutical Management Agency (New Zealand), and many more! 

Overall, we’ve now tracked a monumental 2,838,208 mentions of research outputs in policy documents – giving researchers, institutions, publishers and R&D companies alike an unparalleled insight into how their research is influencing and informing real-world change. 

UK Clinical Trials 

Altmetric tracks attention to trials from clinicaltrials.gov using National Clinical Trial IDs or NCT IDs. 

In an exciting new development, we are currently working on tracking attention by DOI for trials in the ISRCTN registry, a primary clinical trial registry recognised by WHO and ICMJE. 

This will further expand the insights that can be gleaned from investigating the conversations surrounding clinical trials, even before they are published! 

We recently held a webinar on how you can search and explore clinical trials within the Altmetric Explorer, and the recording is available to watch now. 

Looking ahead

We are thrilled to have added so many diverse mention sources over the past year and each one has contributed to us now reaching this incredible milestone of 200 million mentions.

As we’ve mentioned above, we have got lots of exciting developments and additions planned for the year ahead and we are looking forward to sharing them with you all. 

Make sure you’re following us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook or signed up to our mailing list so you never miss one of our announcements. 

All the best for the year ahead! 

The Altmetric Team