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Altmetric at Dundee: Who's talking about your research?

A guide on how to make use of Altmetrics

Demonstrate attention and impact

Altmetric data can be used to demonstrate the attention and impact of your research, for example, in Grant applications, CVs, promotion applications, etc.
Select any donut in Altmetric for Institutions to see both quantitative and qualitative data about the mentions received.

  • You can filter by types of mention
  • Attention Score in Context is particularly useful
  • Select 'More' or 'Mentioned by' for further details
  • Details of country coverage of Twitter and Mendeley activity available

Screenshot of Almetrics details page highlighting Types of Mention, Mentioned by and Score in Context with circles on page

 

Context is important for making any numbers meaningful. Show how your research paper has performed relative to others.

For example:
Author, A. (2020). "Title." Journal name. doi:10.000/10.100x
Listed on Altmetric.com as being in the 96th percentile of papers published in Journal name and the 87th percentile of papers published in 2020
Highest Altmetric score (309) of any paper published in Journal Name, reflecting widespread media coverage.
International impact: this paper has been tweeted in more than 40 different countries.

Qualitative data

Qualitative data is also a good way to demonstrate attention your work has received.

  • Select any of the tabs at the top of the page or from the "Mentioned by" list under the Altmetric donut to view the list of mentions by type
  • Within the tabs select the headlines of the news article, blog title, Tweet etc. to read the original mention at source 

Screenshot of Altmetric details page showing headlines of news articles.

 

For example:
Paper covered by more than 100 media outlets worldwide, including;  The Wall Street Journal; The Guardian.
Recommended on 12 research blogs. Was described as "a breakthrough study on examples" by prominent genetics and evolution researcher Rosie Redfield.
Study results cited and used as the supporting evidence for a threshold recommendation in the 2014 European Food Safety Authority report: Outcome of the peer review of bee study protocols to assess the effects of imidacloprid on bees. This report summarised the outcomes of the EFSA consultation process with Member State experts.

Use the filters available to enable you to highlight different types of mention; use these to demonstrate:

Attention
Retweets, shares
Engagement
Analysis, discussion, reviews
Impact
Shapes policy, influences working practices (tangible)