Altmetrics, social media attention and more

Altmetric

Altmetric captures the social attention received by research outputs

Altmetrics are alternative metrics to traditional metrics like citations. They are an indicator of the online attention received by a research output (eg journal article, conference proceeding, book, dataset), and can be used to support traditional metrics to highlight interest in research that could not be measured in a citation count.

Altmetric is a commercial tool that tracks the attention received by outputs using unique IDs to look for mentions in non-academic sources:

  • local and international news sources
  • social media
  • patent applications
  • policy documents
  • blogs
  • Wikipedia

This attention can help identify activity that could demonstrate research impact, and is especially useful for publications that are available to be read by the public, commercial partners or other interested parties. These readers may only be able to read Open Access publications and are unlikely to cite outputs, but could be engaging online with it in another way and Altmetric might be able to demonstrate this.

The unique research output identifiers used by Altmetric are: digital object identifier (DOI), ISBN, PubMed ID, arXiv ID, Handle, ADS ID, SSRN ID, RePEC ID, URN and ClinicalTrials.gov records

In addition you can include authors’ ORCID iD as a search criterion when using Altmetric search

University staff and students can access Altmetric via the University network (including VPN) to search for publications and the attention picked up by Altmetric. They (as members of the University) can also create an account to save preferences and searches.

Guidance

There is guidance and training materials available in various locations