Altmetric Blog

What kinds of research did people talk about in February? Here’s a hint: they didn’t talk much about love, but they did speak about food, the heart, intellectual property, and some angry scientists. In no particular order, here is another Interactions monthly wrap-up post featuring a selection of 5 new and popular articles in the Altmetric database.   1. “Myths, Presumptions, and Facts about Obesity”Published on 31 January in the New England Journal of Medicine Amidst the outpouring of love (and grumpiness) elicited by Valentine’s Day, medical articles relating to obesity and cardiovascular disease were major topics … Read More

Field research… in the mosh pit With the help of soul-crushing power chords, a driving bass line, frenetic drumming, and perhaps a few otherworldly screams, certain groups of humans might find themselves behaving like random gas particles. After observing moshing from distance at a metal concert, metalhead and Cornell University graduate student Jesse Silverberg began to study the physics of extreme group movements in mosh pits. Silverberg and colleagues collected data from YouTube videos of moshers and created a computer simulation, observing that the energetic movements of the concertgoers could be predicted using 2D mathematical models of gaseous particle … Read More

James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, a prosthetic hand, and models of Neanderthal skulls have something interesting in common: they’ve all been created through a process called “additive manufacturing”, which is more commonly known as 3D printing. With a seemingly endless number of applications and growing retail potential, the topic of 3D printing pops up frequently within mainstream news media. Currently, a PubMed search for 3D printing and additive manufacturing returns over 800 articles, which span a plethora of research disciplines, from materials science to tissue engineering. While you might expect the media hype about 3D printing to … Read More

Direct links to articles, links to news coverage, or mentions within text: online citation formats generally aren’t very consistent. Although bloggers who use the Research Blogging citation system cite articles in a specific manner, no such standardised system exists for mainstream news media. A large number of science news reports don’t even include links to the original papers that are mentioned, which creates a problem for measuring alt-metrics. Up until now, Altmetric has needed to see a direct link to an article in order to count a “mention”, so the absence of links in news reports meant that … Read More

Sharing science with LOLcats Last week, a Nature News & Comment article with the headline “Mice have massage neurons” introduced the subject of a new Nature study in an unusual way: with a video of LOLcats. The study in question was featured on the cover of the 31 January issue of Nature and found that a particular subset of sensory neurons innervating the hairy skin of mice was only responsive to gentle stroking motions. The fascinating neuroscience in the study garnered much online attention (see Altmetric score details), and an approximately equal proportion of … Read More

New feature: LinkedIn mentions If you’ve browsed through the Altmetric Explorer lately, you might have noticed a new addition: the LinkedIn tab (see below for a screenshot). We’ve been collecting mentions of scholarly articles on LinkedIn for a while, and now all these data are part of the Altmetric score. Take the LinkedIn tab for a spin on this example article details page. Although counts from Twitter and Facebook still make up the bulk of mentions of papers online, the professional social media network LinkedIn is also being used by academics to discuss articles. So far, … Read More

Following in the style of my 2012 “The Year in Conversations” post, I’ll be writing a special Interactions monthly wrap-up post about 5 new and popular articles in the Altmetric database. What were people talking about in January? Despite the fact that the month is pseudoscientifically famous because of “Blue Monday”, there was talk about how it could actually be good to be down in the “dumps” (literally – and I’m not talking about mood). And with the prophesised Mayan doomsday behind us, people shared the work of scientists who … Read More