Video: How Altmetric measures the attention surrounding academic research

Dr. Donald Samulack, US Operations, Editage, Cactus Communications, in conversation with Euan Adie, Founder and CEO of Altmetric

This is the second of a series of interview vignettes.

Here, Euan talks about the various types of information Altmetric captures. Altmetric collects data about a paper using three main indicators:

• Public engagement: Is an author’s work being discussed on external platforms such as mainstream media?
• Scholarly use: Are other researchers using an author’s work?
• Policy and practice: Has an author’s work affected the way things happen in the real world?

However, these are merely indicators and users would need some human interpretation for this data. And all this information for each article is brought forward to the researcher in a dedicated article details page that contains a report on each of these indicators.

Other vignettes in the series:

• Part 1: "Altmetric came out of my experience as an author"
• Part 3: Finding and interpreting Altmetric data for published papers
• Part 4: What changes does the current research landscape need?
• Part 5: Researchers should use altmetrics data to advance their careers
• Part 6: The difference between Altmetric and alternative metrics
• Part 7: How Altmetric evolved as a platform that increases the discoverability of research