Last month, we launched a contest inviting our users to tell us how Altmetric has advanced their careers, helped them in their jobs, and benefitted their organizations. We received fantastic entries from around the world, from researchers, librarians, and publishers alike. Ultimately, the contest winner was Rajiv Nariani from York University in Toronto, Canada. Congrats, Rajiv! With Rajiv’s permission, we’re sharing his winning entry answer to the question, “How has Altmetric helped you?” here: Altmetrics have helped start conversations about research metrics at York University. These discussions … Read More
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Dr. Suze Kundu is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Surrey as a well as a presenter, writer and keynote speaker. Her recent work includes contributions to Forbes, Standard Issue and BuzzFeed as well as presenting at this years SpotOn event. We interviewed Suze about her current projects, her favourite channels to communicate science on, tips for researchers new to science communication and much more. Check out the Storify below to read the full interview: [<a href=”//storify.com/cataltmetric/altmetchat-with-dr-suze-kundu” target=”_blank”>View the story “Altmetchat with Dr. Suze Kundu” on Storify</a>] … Read More
Welcome to the Altmetric High Five for November! On a monthly basis, my High Five posts examine a selection of the most popular research outputs Altmetric has seen attention for that month. Our papers this month feature mostly feel-good findings, but sometimes with a twist. For example, researchers this month describe a brand new species of orangutan… that is already endangered. Read on for more good news… with a twist. Dogs bowing to initiate play. Credit: Thomas Zimmermann, Wikimedia. Paper #1. Man’s best friend Our first High Five paper bring great news for dog lovers. The study, … Read More
Altmetrics are a great way for authors to keep track of who is saying what about their work, but they also offer a huge number of opportunities for publishers and editors to get a better understanding of where their articles are being shared and discussed amongst broader audiences. A big benefit of altmetrics is their immediacy; how many times have you sat in a board meeting discussing the Impact Factor of your journal, which actually reflects the activity of the previous year and outcome of decisions you made 3 years ago? Altmetrics can tell you … Read More
While altmetrics are often praised for their ability to show attention in “real time”, to complement traditional citations that tend to take a few years to accrue, they also have the ability to surface attention to older publications. For example, the frighteningly titled “Occurrence of virulent anthrax bacilli in cheap shaving brushes” published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1921 received news attention in 2017. Details Page for “Occurrence of virulent anthrax bacilli in cheap shaving brushes” Older attention for books When Altmetric started tracking attention to books I … Read More
At the end of last month I travelled to Berlin for FORCE 2017, this year’s version of the annual conference that sprung out of the FORC Workshop and Beyond the PDF conferences back in 2011. FORCE11, the group that organizes the conference, has a worthy mission that includes “bring[ing] about a change in modern scholarly communications through the effective use of information technology” which I expect many readers of this blog would be on board with – check out the manifesto for more. I helped to run a workshop designed to help people become more familiar … Read More
Welcome to the Altmetric High Five for October! On a monthly basis, my High Five posts examine a selection of the most popular research outputs Altmetric has seen attention for that month. Our papers this month feature findings that fall somewhere between being creepy and being awesome. It depends on how easily you’re scared. (Big, scary monsters can be awesome, too.) Fireflies. Photo credit: Jon Liu, Flickr.com Paper #1. The Creepy Decline of Flying Insects Did you see any fireflies this summer? Our first High Five paper is Halloween worthy – not for the presence of things that go “buzz” … Read More
It’s that time of the year again: when we take a look through our dungeon of research papers (AKA: The Altmetric Explorer) and re-animate the papers that have given us the heebie-jeebies over the past year! This time we’ve exhumed papers on a multitude of spooky subjects from sleep paralysis to Churchill’s essay on Alien life. The top three scientific explanations for ghost sightings From scary stories to electromagnetic fields and toxic hallucinations this paper gives some research-backed theories as to why people experience ghost sighting. If you’ve ever heard a bump in the night, seen … Read More
The altmetrics journal article with the most online attention ever was published open access in PLOS ONE. I don’t think that’s a coincidence! When research is made openly available online, more people can read and debate it. That helps to raise the profile of the research, meaning an article’s altmetrics’ (and its Altmetric Attention Score) will inevitably rise! There are a number of ways you can legally make your research available online–so-called gold, green, and bronze OA. (For definitions, check … Read More
One of the central aspects of what we do at Altmetric is processing and subsequently storing large quantities of data, whether we are talking about publication meta-data or online attention, in its various formats (news, Facebook or Twitter posts, etc). This allows us to occasionally have a bit of fun in doing our own research to test assumptions and hypotheses that we or others may hold. (Img: http://jiffyclub.github.io/digital-demography-2014/) This year, as part of our participation at the 4AM altmetrics conference in Toronto, Canada, Stacy and I decided to engage in a … Read More