Altmetric (company)

Altmetric (company) is a London-based information services firm specializing in alternative metrics for research outputs. The company develops tools to track mentions of scholarly articles and other research artifacts across online platforms and integrates with research information systems used by institutions such as University of Oxford, Harvard University, Max Planck Society, Wellcome Trust. Altmetric's services intersect with stakeholders including publishers like Springer Nature, Elsevier, and Wiley, funders such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and governmental bodies including UK Research and Innovation.

History

Altmetric was founded in 2011 by Euan Adie following work at Answering Funders, and rapidly engaged with the scholarly communications ecosystem that included CrossRef, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Early collaborations involved publishers such as Taylor & Francis and platform providers including Figshare and Zenodo. In 2013 Altmetric was acquired by Digital Science, a technology investment arm associated with the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and partner organisations like Macmillan Publishers. Subsequent milestones included integrations with institutional repositories at Imperial College London and research information systems such as Pure and Symplectic Elements. The company expanded its footprint through partnerships with indexing services including Microsoft Academic and initiatives involving the National Institutes of Health and the European Research Council.

Products and Services

Altmetric's flagship offering is the Altmetric Explorer, a platform used by research offices at institutions like University of Cambridge and Yale University to monitor attention to publications from sources such as The New York Times, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and policy bodies including World Health Organization briefs. The company provides badges—visual indicators embedded in publisher pages hosted by PLOS, BMJ, and Elsevier ScienceDirect—which display the Altmetric Attention Score alongside links to mentions in outlets such as Nature, Science (journal), and The Lancet. Additional services include API access used by platforms such as ORCID and analytics dashboards consumed by funders like the Wellcome Trust and assessment exercises related to Research Excellence Framework. Altmetric also licenses data to bibliometric firms and collaborates with repositories including arXiv and SSRN.

Methodology and Metrics

Altmetric aggregates mentions using identifiers such as DOI, PubMed ID, and ISBN, and harvests data from social platforms including Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and policy documents from organizations like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and United Nations. The company calculates the Altmetric Attention Score, a weighted composite influenced by sources including mainstream outlets like BBC News, blogs, and citation aggregators such as Google Scholar. The methodology incorporates provenance checks aligned with services like CrossRef Event Data and uses disambiguation informed by metadata standards employed by DataCite and ORCID. Altmetric documents weighting schemes and coverage decisions, interacts with persistent identifier infrastructures from Handle System implementations, and updates harvesting strategies in response to platform API changes by companies such as Twitter, Inc. and Meta Platforms, Inc..

Reception and Impact

Reception among stakeholders has been mixed and widely discussed in venues such as PLOS ONE, Nature (journal), and Science (journal). Proponents at institutions including University College London and funders like the Wellcome Trust cite Altmetric outputs for tracking outreach impact, informing communication strategies for researchers associated with Royal Society awards and grant proposals to agencies such as National Science Foundation. Critics in the bibliometrics community, including authors publishing in Journal of Informetrics and commentators affiliated with Leiden University, raise concerns about gaming, representativeness, and the validity of attention-based indicators relative to citation metrics produced by Clarivate and Elsevier Scopus. Policymakers within European Commission and assessment panels for programs like Horizon 2020 have debated the role of altmetrics alongside traditional indicators. Case studies have documented Altmetric data informing media relations at universities such as University of Toronto and influencing outreach strategies for institutes including Salk Institute.

Data Privacy and Partnerships

Altmetric operates within data ecosystems involving platform providers such as Twitter, Inc., Facebook (company), and archival services like Internet Archive, and must navigate privacy regulations including the General Data Protection Regulation and sector guidance from bodies such as Committee on Publication Ethics. The company has formal partnerships with metadata providers including CrossRef, DataCite, and institutional systems like Symplectic. Strategic collaborations extend to publishers—Nature Publishing Group, PLOS, Wiley-Blackwell—and infrastructure organisations such as Digital Science affiliates and academic consortia including UKSG. Data governance practices are shaped by relationships with repository platforms such as Zenodo and identifier registries like ORCID.

Category:Altmetrics