Attention Score

The Altmetric Attention Score and donut are designed to easily identify the attention a research output has received

The altmetric attention score and donut are designed to easily identify how much and what type of attention a research output has received.

In altmetric you can click on the donut to visit the details page for the research output, to see the original mentions and references that have contributed to the attention score.

  • The colours of the altmetric donut
    The colours of the Altmetric donut each represent a different source of attention

    The colors of the Altmetric donut each represent a different source of attention.

    The amount of each color in the donut will change depending on which sources a research output has received attention from.

  • The Attention Score

    The score is an automatically calculated and weighted count of all of the attention a research output has received and is based on 3 main factors:

    Volume Sources Authors
    The score for an article rises as more people mention it. We only count 1 mention from each person per source, so if you tweet about the same paper more than once, Altmetric will ignore everything but the first. Each category of mention contributes a different base amount to the final score. For example, a newspaper article contributes more than a blog post which contributes more than a tweet. We look at how often the author of each mention talks about scholarly articles, at whether or not there's any bias towards a particular journal or publisher and at who the audience is. For example, a doctor sharing a link with other doctors counts for far more than a journal account pushing the same link out automatically.

    Combined, the attention score represents a weighted approximation of all the attention we’ve picked up for a research output (not a raw total of the number of mentions). You can find more detail about how it’s calculated, including the standard weightings on the Altmetric website.

  • How is the Altmetric Attention Score calculated?

    The Altmetric Attention Score for a research output provides an indicator of the amount of attention that it has received. The score is a weighted count and is derived from an automated algorithm, reflective of the default weightings being:

    News 8 Q&A 0.25
    Blogs 5 F1000/Publons/Pubpeer 1
    Twitter 1 YouTube 0.25
    Facebook 0.25 Reddit/Pinterest 0.25
    Sina Weibo 1 LinkedIn 0.5
    Wikipedia 3 Open Syllabus 1
    Policy Documents (per source) 3 Google+ 1

    Further detailed information is available on the Altmetric website.