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Altmetric Integration Analysis

Overview

Altmetric tracks online attention to scholarly research across social media, news, policy documents, and other non-academic channels. Integration would add a societal impact dimension to our academic citation data.

What Altmetric Tracks Per Paper

High-Impact Sources

Source Score Weight Notes
News 8 Tiered by outlet reach
Blog 5
Podcast 5
Policy document 3 Government/NGO policy
Clinical guideline 3
Patent 3
Wikipedia 3 Capped at 3 total

Social/Community Sources

Source Score Weight Notes
X/Twitter 0.25
Bluesky 0.25
Facebook 0.25 Curated public pages only
Reddit 0.25
YouTube 0.25
Peer review 1 Publons, PubPeer
F1000 1
Syllabi 1 Open Syllabus

Also Available (not scored)

  • Mendeley reader counts
  • Dimensions citation counts
  • PMC/publisher download counts
  • Demographic breakdowns (who is sharing: discipline, status, geography)

API Access

Authentication

  • All requests require an API key (since November 2025)
  • No unauthenticated tier available

Endpoints

  • Query by DOI: GET https://api.altmetric.com/v1/doi/{DOI}?key={KEY}
  • Query by PMID: GET https://api.altmetric.com/v1/pmid/{PMID}?key={KEY}
  • Returns JSON with attention score, mention counts by source, citation metadata

Free Access: SRAD Programme

The Scientometric Research Access to Data (SRAD) programme provides free access to university-affiliated researchers.

Eligibility: University-affiliated, non-commercial, published research What it provides:

  • Altmetric Explorer access (search up to 25,000 identifiers, CSV export)
  • Details Page API, Counts Only (mention counts per source)
  • Details Page API, Full Access (no rate limits, user counts and post data)

Duration: 6-month term Application: Request form Response time: Up to 30 business days

Rate Limits

Access Level Rate Limit
Counts Only key No limits on Counts endpoint
Full Access (SRAD) No rate limits

Bulk Query Feasibility (30,500 DOIs)

With SRAD Full Access:

  • At 2 req/sec: ~4.2 hours
  • At 5 req/sec: ~1.7 hours
  • Many papers will return 404 (not tracked) — especially older/niche papers
  • This itself is an interesting finding (what doesn't get attention)

R Package

library(rAltmetric)  # rOpenSci
result <- altmetrics(doi = "10.1038/465860a")
df <- altmetric_data(result)

Usage Restrictions

Restriction Detail
Bulk redistribution Prohibited without written approval
Attribution Must credit Altmetric on any page displaying data
Publication Include acknowledgement in papers
SRAD term 6 months maximum
X/Twitter data Max 1.5M post IDs per 30 days

Integration Value for EEA Project

What Altmetric adds to us:

  1. Societal attention scores — which papers/disciplines/techniques reach the public
  2. News coverage — which shark research gets journalist attention
  3. Policy citations — which papers influence policy documents (high conservation relevance)
  4. Social media reach — public engagement patterns by topic
  5. Citation vs. attention gap — the core novel analysis

Proposed New Database Columns

Column Type Source
altmetric_score integer Composite attention score
altmetric_news_count integer News outlet mentions
altmetric_blog_count integer Blog mentions
altmetric_policy_count integer Policy document citations
altmetric_twitter_count integer X/Twitter mentions
altmetric_reddit_count integer Reddit mentions
altmetric_wikipedia_count integer Wikipedia citations
altmetric_mendeley_readers integer Mendeley reader count
altmetric_fetched_date date When data was retrieved

Key Analyses Enabled

  1. Discipline attention profiles — which of our 8 disciplines get most public attention?
  2. Technique visibility — do papers using certain methods get more/less attention?
  3. Species charisma effect — do papers on "charismatic" species (great white, whale shark) get disproportionate attention?
  4. Conservation impact — do policy-cited papers cluster in specific disciplines?
  5. Geographic attention bias — do papers from certain countries get more media coverage?
  6. Temporal attention trends — is public interest in shark science growing?

Action Items

  1. Apply for SRAD immediately — 30 business day review period
  2. Frame application: "Scientometric study of attention patterns across 30,500 elasmobranch research papers classified by analytical method and discipline"
  3. While waiting: test with small batch using basic API key
  4. Plan incremental save (JSON/SQLite) for the bulk query

Created: 2026-03-09