Altmetric Blog

Altmetrics gaming, promiscuous tweets and how to promote your work ethically – In another monthly blog post written by Science Wordsmith Lucy Goodchild, we explore the findings and attention around a piece of research published in the previous month that caught the public’s attention. Listen to the podcast episode here. After months (or maybe years) of work, you’ve packaged your research into an article, it has gone through the peer review process and you’ve got a link to its permanent online location, ready to share with the world. What do you do? Tweet it once or schedule a whole … Read More

Stirling University campus. Photo credit: Maciej Gajewski “The Altmetrics Conference is an annual conference organized by a bunch of like-minded individuals who work with alternative metrics.” – Altmetricsconference.com archive.  In early October, the Altmetric Conference successfully ran for its 6th year in Stirling, Scotland. What an eye-opening few days it was! The beautiful venue, the University of Stirling, is a university that prides its quirky character and efforts in sustainability. Attendees were treated to a typical Scottish … Read More

In this post, Mike Taylor, Head of Metrics Development at Altmetric and Dimensions, and Stacy Konkiel, Director of Research Relations at Altmetric, share amazing data insights that have been tracked for books, scholarly monographs, and chapters since we started tracking their online attention in 2016. Altmetric launched Altmetric for Books in 2016, and since then we’ve tracked over 4.6 million online mentions of more than 1.1 million books and book chapters.  In this post, I’ll share the most interesting tidbits about how researchers and the public engage with both trade books and scholarly monographs and their … Read More

Digital libraries contain loads of important scholarly resources: digitized primary sources like letters and illuminated manuscripts, arts scholarship like images and videos, and even interactive, peer reviewed websites. Digital libraries (also known as “digital special collections”) are older than their institutional repository cousins, and also much more complex. Unfortunately, many digital library websites are not optimized to share the basic metadata that allows Altmetric to find and follow conversations around their digitized objects like we can for journal articles and books.  That means that the broader impacts of digital library content is difficult to understand at scale, which in turn … Read More

In another monthly blog post written by Science Wordsmith Lucy Goodchild, we explore the findings and attention around a piece of research published in the previous month that caught the public’s attention. Listen to the accompanying podcast here. Here on Earth we are about halfway between the center and the edge of the Milky Way galaxy. If we were to take a giant cosmic ruler, we would measure that distance at about 25,000 light years – the distance you would travel in 25,000 years if you were moving at the speed of light (about 240 quadrillion kilometers). But we … Read More

In the second post of a new blog series, Head of Metrics Development Mike Taylor explores how Altmetric and Dimensions data can be used to build research narratives. This blog post has also been published on the Dimensions blog. Sidebar: The subject of this blog came about as a result of a tip-off, from my colleague Dr Juergen Wastl of Digital Science Consultancy. Juergen suggested I take a look at the science of plastic biodegradation, and in particular, the role played by the Greater Wax Moth, or Galleria mellonella. Mike is very happy to receive suggestions for the blog: … Read More

Research is key to mastering the grand challenges that society faces, from climate change to curing cancer. Using evidence to make policy and assess short- and long-term implications of research require both expertise and resources. Scientometric research is critical to understand the complex research ecosystem, but this requires that scientometricians have the available information and tools to conduct this research. In order to make advances in the field of scientometrics, it’s obvious that researchers should have easy, direct access to: A diverse set of research information—not only publications and citations, but also grants, patents, … Read More

In another of our monthly blog post written by Science Wordsmith Lucy Goodchild, we explore the findings and attention around a piece of research published in the previous month that caught the public’s attention. Listen to the accompanying podcast here. “We have to do something about climate change before it’s too late!” Calls to action are getting louder and more urgent, but they’re not really engaging us. One of the issues is that climate change can be a difficult concept to grasp – what does 2 degrees actually feel like? How different might home feel in 30 years, when the … Read More

We speak to researcher and expert science communicator, Cylita Guy, about promoting her work on and offline, tips for finding the right communication channels and much more. Ensuring that your work is promoted effectively is often becoming a requirement of doctoral training programs and grant application processes. More than that, it is the responsibility of researchers to make sure the wider society is aware of new discoveries and how they impact them.   In this interview, we speak to the researcher, science educator, and storyteller, Cylita Guy. Cylita is an experienced science communicator, having … Read More

In another of our monthly blog post written by Science Wordsmith Lucy Goodchild, we explore the findings and attention around a piece of research published in the previous month that caught the public’s attention. Listen to the accompanying podcast here. We know the power of ‘puppy dog eyes’ – that irresistible look that dogs use to wind their humans around their paws. Now scientists have shown that the facial movement is peculiar to dogs, and it has evolved since domestication as a result of their interaction with people. The idea for the study came about several years ago, when … Read More