At Altmetric, we track who's saying what about academic papers. Here, we take a look back at 2013, with a review of the 100 papers that received the most attention online - and the conversations that happened around them.
You can find out more about how we collect data and put this list together on our blog.
The top 100 papers were written by authors from numerous institutions and in over 30 countries. We found that institutions in the United States produced the highest number of papers in the top 100, with Harvard University taking the lead.
Browse through the data below to find out which institutions had papers in the top 100, and which regions of the world they came from. Click on an institution name to see the paper(s) that they produced.
We are fascinated by stories that make the news. But some are more than stories - they can be relevant to our daily lives. So when news headlines and research collide, the findings of pertinent papers enter our conversations about current events.
The papers below were shared because they relate to significant recent events. Near the top of the list are papers that report on the biological effects of the Fukushima disaster and others that examine the MERS-CoV outbreak in Saudi Arabia.
How do we live healthier lives? What are the latest medical advancements? Are we closer to curing disease X? These are some of the questions that doctors, clinicians, and scientists are constantly striving to answer in their research.
Diet and obesity were the most popular themes amongst medical papers this year. The most popular paper was one that reported the benefits of the "Mediterranean Diet". The success of this paper also carried over to another that reported on the virtues of eating nuts (which, incidentally, are part of the Mediterranean Diet).
We are naturally curious about the Earth, the Universe, and everything (living or non-living) in between. And although we do know a lot already, there is so much more for us to uncover.
This year, scientists made many new and important discoveries, helping us to understand more about the world we live in. Climate change was the most popular topic, although a menagerie of animals (honeybees, cats, dolphins, dung beetles, and dogs) also captured the public's imagination.
What makes us human? To understand this, we look at our technologies, our interpersonal relationships, our behaviours, our societies, and our history.
Social media and technology were particularly popular themes. There were four very popular studies that specifically dealt with Facebook, and three others that examined the psychological effects of video games.
For scientists, picking a research topic isn't easy - but it can help to have a cheeky sense of humour. Many intriguing and unusual papers became immensely popular, and were widely mentioned in social media. In some cases the unconventional papers were picked up by the mainstream media, further boosting attention.
There isn't any identifiable theme in this list of offbeat papers: topics range from a chicken nugget autopsy to a phylogenetic analysis of the Little Red Riding Hood tale.
Sure, we aren't traveling in flying cars yet, but some of the latest research suggests that we have indeed landed in the future. The article titles in the list below have seemingly jumped right out of a science fiction novel.
People were especially interested in studies about brain-to-brain interfaces, mini brains, and see-through brains. Other astounding papers reported on the storage of massive amounts of information in DNA and the Voyager 1 spacecraft's epic journal into interstellar space.