Altmetric Blog

How do people interact with science? And how does the influence of science change as a result of these interactions? Since the “Interactions” series of blog posts began back in September, we’ve tried to interpret the overarching themes that come from the plethora of online scholarly conversations. From these conversations, we’ve been able to tell stories that extend beyond the original research work. For the last “Interactions” post of 2012, we thought we’d showcase 10 of the top articles in the Altmetric database that received the most online attention in the past year. Note that this is the … Read More

In the first of this 2-part series we looked at 4 research articles and 1 overview on alt-metrics published during 2012 within the “Altmetrics Collection” of the Public Library of Science (PLOS). In this second part we look at 7 more scholarly records (not only articles) that caught our eye during 2012, and provide a glimpse of some of the discussed articles’ current Altmetric scores.  Tracking Impact “Users, Narcissism and Control —Tracking the Impact of Scholarly Publications in the 21st Century” is a report published by the SURF foundation in … Read More

As 2012 draws to a close, the time has come to reflect on what has been an exciting first year for Altmetric. Though founded in the middle of 2011, we released our first products – the free bookmarklet, the Altmetric Explorer, and our API – in February. Altmetric started off as a side project and ended up as a start-up bootstrapped by an app competition, some great feedback from our early users, and kind support from Digital Science, who later went on to make a formal investment. In the blog post accompanying the Digital Science press release in June, the mission … Read More

The body of peer-reviewed literature about alt-metrics on Open Access journals is gradually increasing. Some of the research published during 2012 profiled key issues and recognisable patterns. A prominent Open Access platform for peer-reviewed articles on alt-metrics is the Public Library of Science (PLOS), whose “Altmetrics Collection” collection currently includes eight PLOS ONE articles on alt-metrics.  At the time of writing the collection includes four research articles and one overview published during 2012 and in this Fieldwork post we take a quick look at them. As Priem et al explain in … Read More

A podcast and a digital native It all started with a podcast. Earlier this year, a 27-year-old biochemistry undergraduate student named Jonathon Allen was listening to a segment of this Nature podcast, which concerned a recent Japanese study by Miyake et al. The study had found evidence in tree rings that pointed to the occurrence of an unidentified cosmic-ray event between AD 774 and AD 755. Armed with Google and an interest in history, the resourceful Allen uncovered an entry (dated AD 774) in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which referred to a “red crucifix” in the sky. He proposed that this was … Read More

Blaise Cronin, Rudy Professor of Information Science, Indiana University Bloomington, gave the lecture “The Numbers Game: Scholarly Communication and Digital Metrics” on Monday 10 December 2012 at City University London. He was introduced by Professor David Bawden. Professor Cronin’s extensive and influential publication record in the field of Library and Information Science covers citation analysis, informetrics, scholarly communication and strategic intelligence. In a pioneering article published in 1998, Cronin et al argued that the web fostered new modalities of scholarly communication and … Read More

How can alternative digital methods of scholarly assessment maximise the public impact of academic research? This is a question that all of us interested in alt-metrics have been asking ourselves. “Impact” is a term that can be understood in many different ways too. With this in mind we attended “The Future of Academic Impact” conference organised by the London School of Economics Public Policy Group on Tuesday the 5th of December 2012 at Senate House, London, which sought “to look forward to how impact research and measurement might develop over … Read More

Spinning until we’re dizzy For years, news media outlets have been pushing countless claims about cancer-causing agents in our environment. Many of these claims signal real danger, but others, like visiting the toilet at night, are complete hogwash. But after being bombarded by an constant stream of bad news, one could be forgiven for developing mild hypochondriasis. When combined with Wikipedia, medical advice forums, and various unreliable medical websites, it isn’t hard to imagine why the word “cyberchondria” now exists. When it comes to cancer reporting, the misrepresentation of research and inflation … Read More

In our previous Fieldwork post we posed some initial questions about how humanities and social sciences scholars and journals might benefit from alt-metrics data. In this Fieldwork post we take a quick look at the Library Science journals currently available through the Altmetric Explorer. You can view and download the dataset we discuss on this post on Figshare, here. In  A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader’s Reflections on a Year of Books, Alberto Manguel (2011) wrote that he thought the … Read More