Altmetric Blog

Easily get the Altmetric attention data for your research outputs using your ORCID iD

Adding ORCID support to the Altmetric Explorer and Altmetric for Institutions has been the #1 feature request that we’ve received in the last year. As such, we’re very happy announce today that we have added a brand new ORCID filter to the Explorer family of apps (which includes the original Altmetric Explorer for publishers, the free Explorer for librarians, and Altmetric for Institutions).

As an Explorer user, you are now able to enter a single ORCID at a time to search for Altmetric attention data for all the research outputs associated with that ORCID profile. Any of the research outputs that have mentions will then be displayed in the results. Of course, you can also save workspaces for later viewing and analysis, export CSV spreadsheets containing all the metrics, and set up e-mail alerts about mentioned outputs associated with an ORCID profile.

What does this mean for our users?

Last week, I attended the 2015 UKSG Forum in London, where Josh Brown from ORCID Europe was giving a lightning talk. During his talk, Josh said:

“We can’t reward it if we don’t recognise it.”

This statement captures the essence of the problem we wanted to solve with the new Altmetric-ORCID integration. By allowing users to quickly find Altmetric attention data for research outputs associated with their ORCIDs, we want to make it easier for scholars to get well-deserved credit for all their research contributions – including but certainly not limited to journal articles.

As one of the early members of ORCID, we are committed to helping our users get the most out of their ORCID profiles by allowing them to quickly retrieve the Altmetric attention data for associated research outputs. We know that ORCID is increasingly being adopted into the workflows of institutions and funders, and we’ll definitely be thinking of additional ways to link ORCIDs and Altmetric data in future.

How to use the new ORCID filter in the Explorer

The new ORCID search filter sits on the left-hand sidebar within the Altmetric Explorer and Altmetric for Institutions, right underneath the “With identifiers” filter. Take a look at the explainer video and instructions below.

Here are the step-by-step instructions for retrieving the altmetrics of your research outputs from your ORCID profile:

1. First, ensure that all of your research outputs are listed correctly within your ORCID profile. All unique identifiers must not have any typos and be showing in the correct fields of your profile, otherwise they won’t be recognised by Altmetric. For more information, please take a look at the next section.
2. Log into the Altmetric Explorer or Altmetric for Institutions, and then open the “With ORCID” filter on the left-hand sidebar.
3. Enter a valid ORCID into the box and then press the “Fetch ORCID results” button.
4. At this point, Altmetric will make a connection with ORCID, and ask for a list of research outputs associated with the ORCID. Altmetric then compares this list of research outputs with the ones available in our database (i.e., outputs that have been mentioned in our sources of attention). If any research outputs with mentions are found, you’ll see a message confirming this within the ORCID filter box.
5. Ensure that you’ve set a valid timeframe (e.g., Mentioned in the past day, Mentioned all-time, etc.) before hitting the “Show matching results” button.
6. You should now be able to see all mentioned outputs (associated with a specific ORCID) in your selected timeframe!

After retrieving your search results, you can save everything into a workspace and set up a daily or weekly e-mail alert. However, please note that if you’ve saved a workspace with your ORCID results and then later add new research outputs to your ORCID profile, the list of research outputs stored in an Altmetric workspace won’t automatically update. After publishing new works, you should update your saved workspace by hitting the “Fetch results” button in the ORCID filter again and then save a brand new workspace.

If you need any help with any of this, just drop us a line. More information is also available on our Knowledgebase.

How to set up your ORCID profile to get maximum coverage from Altmetric

Altmetric is able to recognise a variety of unique identifiers from ORCID profiles, including DOIs, PubMed IDs, Handle.net identifiers, arXiV IDs, SSRN IDs, and certain URIs. However, you should ensure that the research outputs that are manually entered into your ORCID profile have no typos in their identifiers and that all the identifiers are stored in the correct fields. You can find more information here.

When manually adding works into your ORCID profile, you should always first enter identifiers into the “identifier value field” (this is the part that Altmetric looks at!) and not the “identifier URL field”. Usually, the identifier URL field will automatically be populated once you have entered the identifier value field.

Here are a few things should be kept in mind when you are tidying up the identifiers in your ORCID profile:

• For a DOI, you should always try to enter it into into “doi” identifier value field in a format such as 10.1038/nature12968.
• If you have to use a DOI URL, make sure it’s the URL field in either of the two URL formats: e.g., http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12968 or http://doi.org/10.1038/nature12968
• A PubMed ID will be picked up if it is stored in the “pmc” identifier value field.
• A Handle.net identifier will be picked up if it is stored in the HANDLE field, but if we are not tracking the institutional repository for which the Handle.net identifier corresponds to, then we won’t pick up any attention for the item. Please check with support@altmetric.com if you’re unsure of whether or not we support the institutional repository.
• An arXiv ID will be picked up if it is stored in the “arxiv” identifier value field. For example, the arXiv ID 1509.03622 could be recognised.
• An SSRN ID will be picked up if it is stored in the “ssrn” identifier value field. For example, the SSRN ID 2675355 could be recognised.
• URLs that Altmetric is tracking already, e.g., articles from The Conversation, can be picked up from the ORCID profile if it is stored in the URL field. For example, http://theconversation.com/jamming-with-your-toddler-how-music-trumps-reading-for-childhood-development-49660 in the URL field will be picked up.

If you need any assistance getting all the items in your ORCID profile to be recognised by Altmetric, just get in touch with us.