Before Altmetric and its colourful badges, or the Altmetric donuts, were born, researchers often had to wait months or years for metrics to know how much attention their research output had garnered. And the measure of this attention was usually limited to citations and attention within the academic circles. Today, Altmetric badges, which can be seen alongside thousands of journal articles, institutional and preprint repository pages, provide real-time updates on attention far beyond academic citations.  

The badges, or ‘donuts’ as they are sometimes known, capture metrics from blogs, posts on X (tweets), news reports, policy and patent documents, academic sources and more. These ‘mentions’ combine to contribute to the Altmetric Attention Score – a weighted count of the attention an item has received, designed to give an at-a-glance indicator of its reach and influence. And because they update in real time, there are no delays in finding out who is talking about a particular piece of research and where the conversation is taking place. 

Broadening publisher engagement: Altmetric for author support and beyond

“We are committed to providing a wide range of impact metrics about our publications beyond citations and the Impact Factor. We believe Altmetric plays an important role in this.” – Andri Johnston, Cambridge University Press (Source: https://www.altmetric.com/case-studies/cambridge-university-press/) 

Many publishers use Altmetric badges to support authors by helping showcase the wider influence of their research output across different platforms thanks to the instantly recognizable visualization. 

This research output has received attention from a range of sources.	Whereas this one is attracting citations from predominantly news, and policy

In addition, publishers are using Altmetric more broadly, in search results, on author profile pages, when viewing articles and some even include the badge when users save articles to their personalised pages or accounts on their sites. For example, Wiley includes Altmetric in author service information and it is prominent in their infographic about journal and article metrics and Taylor & Francis provides information about Altmetrics as an editor resource. 

In the January 2024 CEO’s letter, MDPI CEO Stefan Tochev underlined the important role Altmetric plays. “At MDPI, we are committed to providing our authors with the essential tools to publish, promote, and track their research, “ he wrote. “Our collaboration integrates …[the] Altmetric tool, offering us and our authors the ability to track a variety of sources that monitor and report attention surrounding publications.” The utility of Altmetric for publishers, however, goes beyond just supporting authors. It helps publishers identify the nature of this attention, the sources, and the platforms it originates from. The Journal of Consumer Research provides a glimpse into how publishers are tapping into the uses of Altmetric in their blog post Are We Getting Attention?

Showcasing attention: Altmetric badges on institutional and individual researcher webpages

“We wanted researchers to easily see who is attracted by their research.”- Oliver Renn, Lecturer at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich (Source: https://www.altmetric.com/case-studies/eth-zurich/) 

For institutions and researchers having quick access to the information gleaned from the Altmetric badges are useful for putting together grant applications, tenure submissions, website biographies and more. “Altmetric data can be used to demonstrate the attention and impact of your research, for example, in grant applications, CVs, promotion applications, etc.,” states the University of Dundee LibGuides.

Bethanne Wilson Director of Journal Business and Operations at the non-profit Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) says that, “We like to support our authors as well as we can, and one way we can do that is by helping them promote their works,” she explains. “Having more detailed metrics is very useful for this, and the Altmetric badges allow authors to show all the online attention their paper has received at a glance.” (Source: https://www.altmetric.com/case-studies/radiological-society-of-north-america/) 

The Smithsonian Research Online web page (see screen grab below) gives a clear illustration of how institutions can showcase the attention their researchers receive.

This kind of information can also be accessed and displayed by individual researchers, and having quick access to this information is helpful and convenient. Knowing who is talking about their research allows for researchers to respond in real time on the platform where research is discussed, and also provides useful contacts to follow up with for potential collaborations.  Moreover, Altmetric badges on the personal webpage or publications list allows visitors to be able to click on the donuts to access the full Altmetric Details Page, where they can explore all of the original online mentions and shares of the work. 

Here below are two examples of researchers who use the Altmetric badges on their personal webpages.

Webpage, Steve Davis, Associate Professor, Earth System Science.	Website, Marine Biologist, James Grecian.

The Altmetric badges have been used and loved by researchers for over a decade and continue to provide value to publishers and researchers alike. In a recent LinkedIn post by Pitch Science, a science communication and digital marketing consultancy helping scientists, research institutes, not-for-profits, and other science brands communicate their work to the public, stated that, “Altmetric badges are a great way to show the online attention a piece of research is receiving. And it’s not just academic journals who can use Altmetric badges. It’s actually free and easy for researchers to embed their publications’ Altmetric badges into their personal websites.“

For more information about Altmetric badges and how they can be used to interpret and leverage data, we welcome you to sign up and watch a recently held on-demand webinar.
If you want more general information about Altmetric, don’t hesitate to contact the Altmetric team.

The post How Altmetric badges provide visual insights into attention appeared first on Altmetric.

Data collected in 2022 confirmed Twitter’s value, especially amid increased scholarly attention during the COVID era. Renamed as X, the platform’s rapid transformations since October 2022 have indeed altered its dynamics. And yet, X remains important for research dissemination. The current data shows that despite a decline in activity, X’s engagement remains higher than pre-COVID levels, underscoring its place in the research discourse.

In February 2023, we published a piece, Twitter and the changing conversation, that looked at the continuing value of including data from Twitter in Altmetric, the reflective piece being prompted by the rapidly changing nature of Twitter and the associated uncertainty. The data collected up to December 2022 indicated that Twitter still had huge value as a platform.  During the COVID years, our data showed increased attention to scholarly research across all disciplines, not just in the biomedical and health sciences. Altmetric went from collecting 1.9 million research tweets a month to over 3 million a month. However, starting in October 2022, changes have been even more rapid and, at times, dramatic. It’s safe to say that one of the constants of the platform formerly known as Twitter – now called X – has been “change.” So we decided to look at the updated data and see which of our previous conclusions remain true.

Getting over the COVID-19 hangover

The COVID-19 pandemic upended many systems, not least the information dissemination on social media: as mentioned above, our data showed a spike in attention for all kinds of research, but especially those related to health sciences. From 2020 to 2023, the majority of research papers gaining the highest Altmetric Attention Scores were related to COVID-19 research. And this spike was not just in the volume of posts: the increase was also seen in the number of  users engaging in conversations. However, there has been a slight decline in the number of posts collected from those pandemic spikes (Fig. 1).

“If we look at the number of posts collected from 2023 to  January 2024, our data shows these are gradually decreasing from the peak pandemic years; however, they still remain higher than the pre-COVID era, with more than 2 million posts collected in January 2024” says Dr Carlos Areia, Data Scientist at Digital Science. “We continue to receive almost 500,000 posts every week, but we have noticed a dip in both research-linked posts and the number of users sharing research when we compare current activity with the pandemic years,” he adds. (Fig. 2)

Another signal worth exploring was how the ratio of research publications with and without posts changed over time. The percentage of publications with tweets showed an increase from 14%  in 2011 to 25% in 2015 and remained at similar levels till 2022, with a decrease to 20% in 2023. 

Table 1. Number and proportion of publications with and without posts by year.

As before, the number of publications with at least one post on Twitter/X showed a sharp increase during the pandemic years, with a slight decrease from 2022 to 2023, despite the continuous growth in the number of publications.

A high repost-to-post ratio

One criterion for quantifying the ‘virality’ of a post is to check the ratio of repost to post. Our data shows the 2023 trend of the repost-to-post ratio has been higher than in past years (Fig. 4). Similarly, a Pew Research Center study (see point 6) focusing on U.S. adult users between October 2022 and April 2023 found that the majority of posts on X are either replies or reposts, with three-quarters of these posts being either replies to other users (40%) or reposts (35%). The rest were original posts (15%) or quoted posts (9%). If ‘virality’ can be considered one way to measure attention, our data shows that posts on X still generate substantial levels of engagement with research.

Insights into profiles 

“We looked at the number of users actively sharing research on X from 2018 to 2024, and the pattern is almost similar to what we have seen in the number of posts per week. There is a gradual decrease in comparison to the pandemic period, but the current numbers are still higher than 2018/2019, with over 200,000 users actively sharing research on X per week,” says Dr Areia. (Fig. 5)

Since early 2023, we have continued to monitor and measure  X users’ demographics. Last year, we mentioned the “largest increase was seen amongst users who are not in the academic domain at all. Prior to March 2020, the Twitter profiles we saw mentioning research consisted of roughly 66% “uncategorized” users, which is users that are not considered a part of the medical, academic, or research communities.”

Looking at the updated numbers, the message remains, with a slight decrease in the “uncategorized users” over the past few months (Figs. 6 & 7). Drilling down, we explored the activity of X “clinical users” (to know more about how bespoke Altmetric tools can be used to categorize user profiles, analyze cohorts of researchers, and more, read Gaining deeper insights into Twitter conversations), that had a similar trend. However, despite the slight decrease since the pandemic era, there is still significant research-sharing activity on X from clinicians.

To stay (on X) or not to stay

That X has lost the momentum of activity it gained during the COVID-19 pandemic is evident. A survey published in Nature reveals that scientists are cutting back from using X. But migrating to other platforms and reproducing an identical community is almost impossible. Casey Fiesler, Associate Professor of Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder, wrote an article for The Conversation, saying: “There is essentially zero chance that Twitter, as it exists now, could be reconstituted on another platform. Any migration is likely to face many of the challenges previous platform migrations have faced: content loss, fragmented communities, broken social networks, and shifted community norms.”

X also continues to be an important destination for news. A Reuters Institute and University of Oxford research published in 2023 concluded that Twitter’s use for news has remained consistently stable over the last decade despite various changes and that it is notably regarded as a destination for news, especially political news from mainstream, alternative sources, and politicians.

For Altmetric, the aggregated data continues to show that X has significant value as a research dissemination platform and remains the leading source of our social media attention. Activity is still higher than pre-COVID levels, with over 600,000 unique users and more than 2 million “research linked” posts recorded per week in January 2024 alone. Our conclusion from last year still holds true: the stories that our data tells can help inform publications and research strategies far beyond social media and show how research publications can have an impact beyond the academic sphere.

For more information about how to use Altmetric, contact the Altmetric team.

The post Since Twitter became X… appeared first on Altmetric.

On 22 December 2015, the UN General Assembly established February 11th as the “International Day for Women and Girls in Science” to address the fact that women and girls are underrepresented in the STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) fields. The 2024 theme to mark the day focuses on implementing measures to close the gender gap in science. Encouraging women and girls to pursue STEM fields is essential, but equally critical is addressing the bias experienced by women researchers within these fields. Studies reveal that despite having established careers in science, women encounter obstacles such as pay disparities, missed funding opportunities, and unconscious gender bias in evaluation metrics, which hinder their progress.

Today, along with traditional evaluation metrics (publishing in journals with a high impact factor and citation counts), there exist tools like altmetrics (short for alternative metrics) to quantify the amount of interest a paper garners on digital platforms such as online news and social media. But could altmetrics be used to inform if a researcher’s gender plays any role in garnering recognition, success and impact in STEM fields? And perhaps more importantly, can it be leveraged to address existing gender disparities in the world of STEM research?

Unmasking gender disparities

Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) has been designed to offer a quick and simple way to identify how much and what type of attention a research output has received. In a 2023 study published in Nature titled “Gender disparities in altmetric attention scores for cardiovascular research,” researchers investigated more than 6000 articles in the top five cardiology and cardiovascular field journals (2015–2021) with corresponding article-level AAS. The results revealed that papers with women first and last authors received significantly less attention and that the lower attention scores in turn affected the future citations (Fig. 1).

In addition, the results showed that women authors receive up to 20% fewer citations than men for articles that receive the same amount of attention. Underlining the importance of attention across the board trickling down to the traditional metrics, the authors write, “Attention to research articles is a theoretical antecedent to citations since scholars can only cite articles they are aware of. Attention to research may thus serve as an early indicator of citation potential.”

Qualifying and quantifying the disparity

While the above-mentioned study focussed on cardiology, a subfield of life science research where women are particularly challenged in their career advancement, another 2023 study “Does society show differential attention to researchers based on gender and field?” looked at 22 research disciplines to understand if gender differences exist across disciplines when it comes to social attention. The authors examined the most mentioned researchers in Spain in the 22 disciplines, as recorded in Altmetric between 2016 and 2020. Their study found that differences in attention exist and they vary not only across disciplines but also across what they define as dimensions (media influence (mentions in mainstream news), political influence (mentions in public policy reports), social media influence (mentions in Twitter), and educational influence (mentions in Wikipedia)). Among other points, the authors concluded that interpreting altmetrics within the context of each field and alongside traditional metrics is crucial for gaining a comprehensive understanding of research attention and impact across diverse disciplines especially when it comes to gaining a clearer understanding of gender disparities.

Democratizing academic evaluation

The above-mentioned studies show that Altmetric can be used to gain a better understanding of gender biases , but can tools like Altmetric support in levelling the playing field for women in STEM? Yes, according to a study published in the journal Scientometrics, where the authors, Fortin et al., analyzed the Altmetric Attention Score of more than 200,000 articles published in seven major journals, including Nature, PNAS, PLOS One, and New England Journal of Medicine, Cell. “Our findings qualify Altmetric, for many types and disciplines of journals, as a potentially unbiased measure of science communication in academia and suggest that new technologies, such as those on which Altmetric is based, might help to democratize academic evaluation,” they write. 

However, this is not to say that women researchers do not face disparities in gaining attention online. In fact, some studies have found that women find the same barriers in the online world, which altmetrics draws from, as they do in the traditional offline world which informs traditional evaluation metrics. But altmetrics allows a clearer picture of where and how the disparities arise. For example, in the above-mentioned study “Does society show differential attention to researchers …,” the authors were able to identify that the most egalitarian dimensions are the mainstream news and policy while Twitter and Wikipedia mentions show gender differences in 9 of the 22 fields, with men consistently receiving more mentions than women. This type of granular information could be a step in first identifying and then mitigating the factors that result in gender bias in altmetric attention and possibly be applied to traditional metrics to make evaluation more equitable across the board.

Looking ahead

Tools like Altmetric have the potential to play a crucial role in uncovering gender bias by providing transparent and thorough data regarding the dissemination and attention garnered by research. Through the analysis of Altmetric data, one can scrutinize patterns of attention and engagement with scholarly works. Research, exemplified by those referenced here, illustrates how Altmetric solutions can pinpoint potential disparities in recognition and visibility. Thus, Altmetric solutions could provide insights to mitigate gender disparity in STEM fields through targeted interventions. Stakeholders can utilize this information to devise strategies for promoting greater equity in research dissemination and recognition. Importantly, studies utilizing Altmetric data can raise awareness about gender bias in scholarly communication, and Altmetrics itself can be an integral component of evaluation criteria that is more inclusive and equitable.

Talk to us for access to Altmetric data or speak to our support team to learn more about how to explore the data. 

Further reading

• Women’s first publications in decline after decades of growth
• Gender Representation in UK Research Institutions

The post Can Altmetric help create a level playing field for women in STEM? appeared first on Altmetric.

What was discovered first, antimicrobials or antimicrobial resistance? The answer is not as obvious as expected. The first report of antimicrobial resistance ostensibly pre-dates penicillin discovery. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) develops when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, and even death. The increasing prevalence of AMR globally has been so alarming that AMR is recognized as one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity. 

In 2015, the World Health Organization adopted the Global Action Plan and established the World Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week (earlier known as the World Antibiotic Resistance Awareness Week) from 18-24 November.  The World Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week, or WAAW, is a global campaign that aims to raise awareness and understanding of AMR and promote best practices among One Health stakeholders to reduce the emergence and spread of drug-resistant infections. The WHO website states that the theme for WAAW 2023 is “Preventing antimicrobial resistance together“. 

Despite the alarming global health threat posed by AMR, the February 2023 editorial in The Lancet Microbe stated that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is thought to be “largely unknown to the general public”, at least in the USA. To get a quick overview of when and who is having conversations about AMR, we ran a search for publications that included “Antimicrobial Resistance” in the title in Altmetric Explorer. The results (Fig. 1) showed that while the phrase Antimicrobial Resistance had only negligible mentions before 2012, the conversation around the theme has steadily been picking up attention, especially in the News and X, formerly Twitter, categories. This rise is evident starting in 2015 when the GAP was adopted.

Zooming in on the X and the News categories for the same period (Fig. 2)  shows a slight dip in mentions in 2020, possibly coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic. But the attention picks up again in 2021, and there is a sharp rise seen in 2022.

A look at the Altmetric Attention Scores of publications that included “Antibiotic Resistance” in the title shows that a study published in The Lancet titled Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis garnered an attention score of 11101, putting it in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric (see Fig. 3)

This study presents the first global estimates of the burden of bacterial AMR covering an extensive set of pathogens and pathogen–drug combinations using consistent methods for both counterfactual scenarios. The need to have such global approaches to research that give a holistic picture of global challenges, in this particular case AMR, is being addressed in Digital Science’s campaign titled Fragmentation: a divided research world? In the article Waves of attention: patterns and themes of international antimicrobial resistance reports, 1945–2020, published in BMJ Global Health, authors Overton et. al. write, “Attention regarding AMR at the international policy level has increased consistently since the late 1990s. This increase in policy push coincides with a planetary framing of AMR threats that have to be dealt with at the international level.” 

The same authors, however, also caution that, despite the ongoing escalation of the AMR problem, the number of international reports started to decline after 2017/2018. This decline, coupled with recent reductions in international funding and support from significant national donors, suggests that attention to AMR at the international level may have reached a turning point even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic according to them. Given that the WHO has stated that “the clinical pipeline of new antimicrobials is dry” and that in 2019, it “identified 32 antibiotics in clinical development that address the WHO list of priority pathogens, of which only six were classified as innovative,” continued efforts to carry out AMR research in a globally coordinated manner, and ensuring that the impact in real-word settings are systematically tracked remains a burning issue.

Are you part of an institution, funding agency, industry, or research group that would like to learn more about how Altmetric can be used to understand the impact of research? Feel free to contact us.

The post Antimicrobial resistance: the urgency of tracking attention appeared first on Altmetric.

Altmetric for combating misinformation

While the digital spaces have removed several barriers to information access, it has also opened the floodgates of misinformation and fake news.  As early as 2013, the World Economic Forum cited the growth of misinformation and disinformation as a global risk, especially in high-stakes and volatile situations, where false information or inaccurately presented imagery can cause damage before it is possible to communicate accurate information. In this milieu, it becomes important for researchers, educators and students alike to become critical consumers of information, and Altmetric can be a powerful tool to aid this process. ‘Teaching Undergraduates to Collate and Evaluate News Sources with Altmetrics,’ is a chapter in a recently published book that delves into how to evaluate information and recognize fake news. The authors write that altmetrics can be an important tool to understand the context surrounding a resource, which in turn can help a student make a more critical and accurate evaluation. “Instructors and librarians could inadvertently teach altmetrics as a scoring tool to gauge the importance of research to the public. Arguably, on the surface, this is what altmetrics does, but beneath that surface lies the metaphorical iceberg of the complex engagement with research and all its layers of context,” they write.

Another example is that of two recent studies, which showed that as research ecosystems and the means of information dissemination continue to evolve rapidly, tools such as the Altmetric Attention Score have the potential to find versatile uses. The authors write that Altmetric can find uses from tracking attention within and outside academic settings and assessing academic impact to analyzing scientific misinformation and possibly more.  The papers Investigating Scientific Misinformation Using Different Modes of Learning (a conference paper presented at the Proceedings of the Workshop on Scientific Document Understanding, AAAI Press, 2023) and Evolution of retracted publications in the medical sciences: Citations analysis, bibliometrics, and altmetrics trends published in Accountability in Research, looked into how the data behind the Altmetric Attention Score can be used to analyze scientific misinformation. Both papers examined the scores for retracted publications. The blog article An Altmetric lens on retractions and misinformation has more in-depth information.

Altmetric for gleaning information in medical affairs 

Until recently, medical affairs professionals might have struggled to answer questions such as “How can I explain to my managers the full reach of the articles I write, beyond counting citations?”Or “Is it possible to know what patients and doctors are saying about the research I publish for my company?” The advent of Altmetric has made it possible to unveil data that answers exactly these kinds of questions. A white paper published by Altmetric and IMPRINT Science shows how Altmetric can provide invaluable digital tools for medical affairs professionals to operate in a world of information overload and rapidly-evolving expectations that come from increasing information accessibility. Examples in the white paper illustrate how Altmetric data can be used to find unique key opinion leaders (KOLs), digital opinion leaders (DOLs), illuminate the growth of therapeutic areas, and test assumptions about the value of industry sponsorship for research. Used alongside citation counts and social media metrics such as follower counts, hashtag reach, and other measures of social engagement for a brand or topic, altmetrics are an invaluable source of insights for companies seeking to publish strategically and be more impactful.

Altmetric for research evaluation

Although Altmetric was originally designed for measuring ‘quantity of attention’, in a recent study, scientists explored the possibility of evaluating research by looking into the quality and context of altmetrics data. Titled “Evaluative altmetrics: is there evidence for its application to research evaluation?,”  the study introduces an approach that applies altmetrics to identify unique audiences, local attention, engagement metrics, and mentions and the profile of the actors involved in the mentions. The study illustrated in a practical way how indicators can be combined with unique sources of information to allow contextualization of attention. The study authors propose the creation of dashboards at both publication and author levels, offering comprehensive insights into measured attention while segmenting different instances of social engagement. According to the team, the proposed framework can be effectively employed by institutions and evaluation agencies for informed decision-making.

Digital spaces have evolved rapidly, and perhaps it might not be an exaggeration to state that changes happen almost real-time, and without doubt this directly impacts media and information literacy. Tools such as Altmetric that allow looking at layers of information and social engagement data can be invaluable tools to ensure media and information literacy for a wide spectrum of users ranging from students and researchers to medical affairs professionals. Having a good handle on altmetrics could translate to being better equipped to navigate the complex landscape of digital information, ultimately contributing to a more informed and literate global community.

For more information about how to use Altmetric, contact the Altmetric team.

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The emphasis on including patients, families, caregivers, and communities in the discourse means looking beyond research and scholarly circles to understand what themes related to patient safety resonate within the ‘public’ domain. We looked at the Altmetric Attention Scores of research publications on patient safety to get an initial overview. The aim was to gauge the level of attention these publications received beyond the academic ecosystem.

We first looked at publications featuring the term “patient safety” in their titles. Patient safety, as defined by the WHO, revolves around preventing patient harm and reducing the risk of avoidable harm associated with healthcare to the lowest possible level (for more information, see the WHO page on Patient Safety). Within the broader context of the healthcare system, it encompasses a systematic approach involving various elements, such as cultures, processes, procedures, behaviors, technologies, and environments, with the overarching goal of consistently and sustainably minimizing risks, reducing avoidable harm, mitigating errors, and lessening the impact of harm when it does occur.

With the term “patient safety” in the title, an opinion piece For Patient Safety, It Is Not Time to Take Off Masks in Health Care Settings in the Annals of Internal Medicine was the one that garnered the highest Altmetric Attention Score. The authors Tara N. Palmore (George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, DC)  and David K. Henderson (Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland) argue that there is a case to continue using masks in health settings despite the lack of consensus among the medical fraternity and the urgency to return to ‘normalcy’ after the COVID-19 pandemic.

WHO has also pinpointed several common sources of patient harm, each of which carries significant repercussions. These include medication errors, which according to WHO data, affect one in every 30 patients in healthcare, with over a quarter of these incidents classified as severe or life-threatening. Searching for the titles with the term “medication errors” yielded a study titled “Non-health care facility medication errors resulting in serious medical outcomes,” published in Clinical Toxicology with an Altmetric Attention Score of 944. Authors Nichole L. Hodges (Center for Injury Research and Policy at The Research Institute of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus,USA) et al. conclude that “The rate of non-health care facility medication errors resulting in serious medical outcomes is increasing, and additional efforts are needed to prevent these errors.”

Another pressing concern is healthcare-associated infections globally affecting 0.14% of patients, increasing by 0.06% annually. These infections lead to prolonged hospital stays, persistent disabilities, and crucially, increased chances of contributing to and being affected by antimicrobial resistance. WHO states that healthcare-associated infections also add financial burdens on patients and healthcare systems and result in avoidable fatalities. The study with the highest Altmetric Attention Score in this theme is a 2013 one titled Health Care–Associated Infections: A Meta-analysis of Costs and Financial Impact on the US Health Care System from the JAMA Internal Medicine.

The term “venous thromboembolism,” commonly known as blood clots, represents a highly burdensome but preventable cause of patient harm, contributing to one-third of hospitalization-associated complications. The WHO also lists it as one of the leading causes of patient harm. Despite the seemingly technical term, papers with venous thromboembolism in their titles have garnered some of the highest Altmetric Attention Scores in patient safety-related studies. Although the ‘top two’ are papers related to COVID-19 studies (Autopsy Findings and Venous Thromboembolism in Patients With COVID-19 and Arterial events, venous thromboembolism, thrombocytopenia, and bleeding after vaccination with Oxford-AstraZeneca ChAdOx1-S in Denmark and Norway: population based cohort study), the third on the list is Edoxaban for the Treatment of Cancer-Associated Venous Thromboembolism. This study, funded by the Daiichi Sankyo; Hokusai VTE Cancer ClinicalTrials, garnered a score of 1047, with mentions in 77 news outlets, over 700 tweets, and three policy mentions.

To learn more about using the Altmetric Explorer and the Altmetric Attention Score, contact the friendly Altmetric team.

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Altmetrics and the Altmetric Attention Score were born from the need to gauge the attention and impact of academic research in a digital age that has seen an acceleration in information dissemination and a burgeoning of platforms for sharing scientific information. Originally devised to quantify the extent and nature of attention garnered by research outputs, the Altmetric Attention Score seems to have found applications beyond its primary intent. A blog published in June 2023, “Beyond the Doughnut: Five Ways to Use Altmetrics for Academic Success,” featured in the London School of Economics Impact Blog, gave insights on how one can squeeze more out of altmetric scores. 

Now, two recent papers show that the Altmetric Attention Score can have applications pertinent in this era of misinformation in the digital age. The papers Investigating Scientific Misinformation Using Different Modes of Learning (a conference paper presented at the Proceedings of the Workshop on Scientific Document Understanding, AAAI Press, 2023) and Evolution of retracted publications in the medical sciences: Citations analysis, bibliometrics, and altmetrics trends published in Accountability in Research, looked into how the data behind the Altmetric Attention Score can be used to analyze scientific misinformation. Both papers examined the scores for retracted publications.

The authors of Investigating Scientific Misinformation Using Different Modes of Learning were interested in understanding if it was possible to tease out themes of scientific thought that are poor quality and popular from those that are not. The team used the Altmetric Attention Score as a metric for publication popularity to categorize articles into low-popularity and high-popularity subsets. “We use retracted publications as a proxy for identifying publications with a high potential for misinformation and the Altmetric Attention Score as a proxy for publication popularity,” the authors write. The authors analyzed scientific misinformation across different research areas and measured the prevalence of scientific misinformation. 

The second study, Evolution of retracted publications in the medical sciences: Citations analysis, bibliometrics, and altmetrics trends, looked into retracted articles, their presence, and evolution in online platforms. One of the questions the team sought to answer was: To what extent were retracted articles shared on social platforms? To answer this research question, they tapped into the Altmetric Attention Score to gain a comprehensive view of these articles’ online engagement. Of the retracted publications examined, the highest Altmetric Attention Score of 2,972 was associated with a withdrawn paper on COVID-19 research, which garnered 4,808 shares on Twitter. A thought-provoking observation was that certain articles continued to attract attention on social media even after being retracted, ostensibly from individuals without specialized expertise. The authors, however, note that the difficulty in attributing mentions before or after retraction underscores the nuanced approach required for interpreting Altmetric data.

Both papers discussed show that as research ecosystems and the means of information dissemination continue to evolve rapidly, tools such as the Altmetric Attention Score have the potential to find versatile uses, from tracking attention within and outside academic settings and assessing academic impact to analyzing scientific misinformation and possibly more. 
To learn more about the Altmetric Attention Score and how it can be used, visit the donut and Altmetric Attention Score page.

The post An Altmetric lens on retractions and misinformation appeared first on Altmetric.

While Pride Month draws to a close in many countries at the end of June – with some events continuing into July, such as in the UK – academic research into LGBTQ+ inclusivity continues all year round. One important facet of this research is looking into LGBTQ+ inclusivity in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).

So why focus on STEM? The progress in STEM disciplines undeniably propels our society forward, acting as a catalyst for technological disruption and innovation. A prime example is recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), widely regarded as some of the most profound disruptors that will revolutionize our global functioning. It is crucial to acknowledge that bias, stemming from a lack of diversity and inclusion, represents a blind spot in AI. And so, understanding the scholarly conversations surrounding diversity and inclusivity – including those that involve the LGBTQ+ community – becomes essential as we navigate the future.
To better understand the wider impact of scholarly conversations on the topic, we used Altmetric Explorer to look at the Altmetric Attention Score of publications using the key phrases “LGBTQ+ and STEM” and “LGBT and STEM”.  Here are the papers attracting the most attention worldwide.

With the combination “LGBTQ+ and STEM, the paper with the highest Altmetric Attention Score of 1256 is Systemic inequalities for LGBTQ professionals in STEM, authored by Erin Cech (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) and Tom Waidzunas (Temple University: Philadelphia) and published in Science Advances in 2021. The study surveyed more than 25,000 U.S.-based STEM workers, of whom approximately 1000 identified as LGBTQ. It showed that LGBTQ professionals in STEM are 30% more likely to experience workplace harassment than non-LGBTQ peers. 

Second on the list is an article titled Increasing the visibility of LGBTQ+ researchers in STEM, by Matthew Sinton (University of Glasgow) et al., published in The Lancet. The authors propose interventions to increase the visibility of LGBTQ+ researchers; they write that those who can come to terms with their sexual and gender orientation can serve as role models for the entire community.

The top five publications also include LGBTQ+ in STEM: Visibility and Beyond, Together in diversity: insights and wisdom from LGBTQ+ people working in STEM, and Measuring and Resolving LGBTQ Disparities in STEM. 

With the key phrase combination “LGBT and STEM”, a news article published in Nature, How LGBT+ scientists would like to be included and welcomed in STEM workplaces, comes top with an Altmetric Attention Score of 723. The piece outlines the steps that peers and institutions can take to make laboratories, conferences and lecture halls safe and inclusive spaces.

Second on this list is Queer in STEM Organizations: Workplace Disadvantages for LGBT Employees in STEM Related Federal Agencies, an article that looks into persistent inequalities that employees from the LGBT community face despite the non-discrimination policies and accountability structures that exist in STEM-related federal agencies in the US.

All these articles provide valuable insights into the challenges faced by those from the LGBTQ+ community in STEM and underscore the significance of research in promoting visibility and inclusivity to address these issues.

Using Altmetric Attention Scores to assess scholarly publications on LGBTQ+ in STEM helps emphasize the conversations surrounding these works and their wider impact. The hope is that these metrics can be further used to recognize and amplify crucial discussions on the topic within and outside the academic community. This is essential for driving positive change and creating a more equitable future driven by non-biased technological and scientific advances.

The post LGBTQ+ in STEM: examining scholarly conversations appeared first on Altmetric.

As a result, we will be implementing a series of five extended maintenance windows in March. Each maintenance window will take place on a Wednesday, with the first one scheduled for March 1, 2023, and the last one scheduled for March 29, 2023. All maintenance windows will be held from 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM.

We understand that these maintenance windows may cause some inconvenience, which is why we want to provide as much information as possible to help you plan accordingly. 

The products that will be affected by these maintenance windows include the:

• Altmetric Explorer
• Explorer API
• Altmetric Detail Pages
• Details Page API
• Altmetric website

We will provide additional details on the day where appropriate, you can also track the migration process.

Please note that our helpdesk and support site will be unaffected by these changes.

While the risk of extended downtime is low, the risk of brief interruptions to product availability and functionality is considered medium to high. We want to assure you that we will be putting all the necessary measures in place to prevent data loss, and we have rollback plans in place where appropriate.

We understand that the scheduled maintenance windows may cause some inconvenience and we apologize in advance for any resulting disruption. It’s important to us to complete this project with minimal impact on our customers, and we want to assure you that we’re taking all possible measures toward this end.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your patience and understanding during this period of transition. If you have any questions or concerns about the maintenance windows, please do not hesitate to contact us via support@altmetric.com.

The post We’re migrating to the cloud appeared first on Altmetric.