Altmetric Blog

Since the launch of Altmetric Badges for Books last year, we’ve been fascinated to see the different types of attention that all sorts of books attract from all sorts of channels and audiences. Who knew, for example, that a computer algorithm could now recreate a Van Gogh, or the extent of influence that the ancient Egyptian’s have on our daily life? These scenarios are just a small snapshot of the huge amount of engagement we see happening online every day. Data … Read More

Our second Ambassador Spotlight interview for 2017 is with Innocent Awasom, Associate Librarian at Texas Tech University. Innocent has been an Altmetric Ambassador since March 2015 and is passionate about spreading the word about altmetrics and the importance for both researchers and institutions to embrace new methods for tracking impact. Innocent’s role at Texas Tech involves advising and running workshops for students on how to incorporate altmetrics in their workflows, as well as making recommendations to colleagues on how they can use altmetrics to inform strategic planning. We spoke to Innocent about his role, his involvement in the … Read More

The following guest post was written by Lily Troia, Engagement Manager at Altmetric. Altmetrics offer researchers and organizations powerful insights into conversations happening around scholarship, yet achieving widespread adoption of altmetrics, especially at academic institutions, can often feel like a Sisyphean endeavor. Much like advocating for any new digital tool, approach, or culture shift, advocating for use of altmetrics requires a concerted, yet reflexive approach, strategic communication and outreach, and above all, alignment with organizational mission and vision. ‘Much like advocating for any new digital tool, approach, or culture shift, advocating for use of … Read More

Lots of researchers tell us they love seeing and exploring the altmetrics for their work, but aren’t always sure what to take make of it, or what to do as a result of what they find. In this blog post we’ll provide some pointers for interpreting your altmetrics, and what you can look to do as a next step. 1. Finding the altmetrics for your content There are several ways you can find altmetrics for your publications, and not necessarily just the metrics provided by Altmetric.com. Many publishers now include the Altmetric badges on their … Read More

Welcome to the Altmetric High Five for April! On a monthly basis, my High Five posts examine a selection of the most popular research outputs Altmetric has seen attention for that month. This month’s papers describe high-impact findings that have to potential to change our perspectives on various scientific issues and questions. But some of these findings are controversial, and often require more evidence if they are to be paradigm shifts in our understanding of the world. Illustration: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia / Nature Communications Paper #1. Artificial Wombs Our first High Five paper is “An extra-uterine system to physiologically support the extreme … Read More

Back in Spring 2016 we announced that Altmetric was now tracking attention to books and their individual chapters based on the ISBN and other unique identifiers. This was a really big step towards helping authors of monographs track and evidence the broader engagement relating to their research. Tracking attention for books is not an easy task, and we’re still learning more all the time about how we can improve! The metadata is often messy and the way that people talk about them online is very different to the way they discuss and share journal … Read More

Created in 2014, WeShareScience is an online platform for researchers to post videos showcasing their latest work. We spoke to site creator Ryan Watkins, Professor of Educational Leadership at George Washington University, to find out more about the site and what he’s aiming to achieve. Could you tell us a bit about your site? How did it get started and what are you aiming to achieve? Like many ideas, WeShareScience emerged out of frustration and curiosity. As a professor of educational technology, much of my work cuts across many fields and disciplines. Read More

Nominate your favourite arts, humanities and social science blogs for a chance to win a £25/$25 Amazon voucher!  Altmetric already monitors over 11,000 blogs from a variety of disciplines on a real-time basis looking for mentions of published research – be it a book, article, dataset or other output type. All of the mentions found are displayed on the related details page for the item, which is easily accessible by clicking on the Altmetric badge where you see it on institutional repositories or publisher websites. In doing so we’re hoping to help … Read More

Not everyone wants their discussions of research tracked / Image CC-BY-SA savageblackout/Flickr The team here at Altmetric has been recently pondering the extent to which our status as a “Big Data” company (and that of other altmetrics aggregators, by extension) might challenge individuals’ privacy when discussing research on social media. On the one hand, we mostly track public conversations surrounding research. On the other, many social media users feel that while others can view their conversations in theory, they are having personal conversations that are not intended for anyone but their followers to see (e.g., doctors talking amongst themselves, … Read More

Last week we hosted our latest #Altmetchat with Dr Sam Illingworth, Senior Lecturer in Science Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University. We chatted to Sam about what inspired him to get into Science Communication, why researchers should care about Science Communication, his love of poetry and much more.      Similar to our last #Altmetchat, we asked a question to our followers on the days leading up to the interview. We’re still receiving answers so please feel free to send in your response to our question by tagging it with #Altmetchat: Sam gave some … Read More