Altmetric, or altmetric.com, is a
data science
Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a br ...
company that tracks where published research is mentioned online, and provides tools and services to institutions, publishers, researchers, funders and other organisations to monitor this activity, commonly referred to as
altmetrics.
Altmetric was recognized by European Commissioner
Máire Geoghegan-Quinn in 2014 as a company challenging the traditional reputation systems.
Altmetric is a portfolio company of
Digital Science, which is owned by
Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.
History
Altmetric was founded by Euan Adie
in 2011. Previously a researcher, Adie had already worked on Postgenomic.com, an
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
scientific blog aggregator founded in 2006. In 2011, Adie entered an altmetrics app into
Elsevier
Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...
's Apps for Science competition and won. The prize money enabled Altmetric to develop a full version of the Altmetric Explorer, released in February 2012.
In July 2012, Altmetric took on additional investment from Digital Science
and is still a part of the group today, with offices in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
.
In 2019 Altmetric and
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
received funding from the
Google Digital News Innovation Fund to "build a novel tool for measuring the impact of
journalism
Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (profes ...
".
Concept
A term first coined in the altmetrics manifesto in 2010,
(also known as 'alternative metrics') were developed to provide authors and other stakeholders a more comprehensive record of engagement with scholarly work, particularly that which takes place beyond the academy amongst a broader audience.
In order to do this, Altmetric tracks a range of online sites and sources looking for 'mentions' (links or written references) to scholarly outputs (which include journal articles, blogs, data sets and more). Sources of the attention include the mainstream media, public policy documents, social and academic networks, post-publication peer-review forums and, more recently, Wikipedia and the
Open Syllabus Project
The Open Syllabus Project (OSP) is an online open-source platform that catalogs and analyzes millions of college syllabi. Founded by researchers from the American Assembly at Columbia University, the OSP has amassed the most extensive collectio ...
.
The data are tracked in real-time and collated in the Altmetric details pages, which provide a clickable summary of all of the online attention relating to a single research output.
The Altmetric Attention Score and Donut Badge
Altmetric employs an algorithm to assign each item an automatically calculated score. Based on the volume and source of attention an item has received, the score is intended to reflect the reach or popularity of the research output. A multicolored 'donut' visualization is also generated to provide a summary of the sources of the attention that an item has received (red for news, light blue for Twitter, etc.).
Altmetric make the data available via the Altmetric Bookmarklet, a browser plugin, the Explorer platform, a cloud-hosted database, and
API
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...
.
The sources include academic citations and academic platforms, patents, posts on
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
and
web forums,
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
articles, users on
Mendeley.
Many publishers, including
John Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, in p ...
,
Taylor and Francis, The
JAMA Network and
Springer Nature
Springer Nature or the Springer Nature Group is a German-British academic publishing company created by the May 2015 merger of Springer Science+Business Media and Holtzbrinck Publishing Group's Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, and Macm ...
embed the Altmetric 'Donut' Badges into their journal article and book pages to show the Altmetric score for individual items from within the publisher platform. Even though there is no clear link between altmetric scores and societal impact, they can be used to predict future citation impact
,
[
] and may be a target for manipulation.
See also
*
figshare
*
Plum Analytics
References
{{Authority control
Academic publishing
Scholarly communication