Knowledge Base

Alternative Metrics, also called ‘Altmetrics’, are metrics that track the attention that a researcher or publication has received online by tracking mentions of a researcher or publication in social media, news, government policy, and patents, among other sources.

Altmetric Explorer tracks online attention from a variety of sources including social media platforms, news outlets, government policy, patents, and blogs, in addition to academic sources. The tool can be used by itself or in connection with Dimensions Analytics.

Altmetric Attention for a Specific Article or List of Articles

1. Altmetric Explorer – create an account with your @stanford.edu email
2. At the top of the page, select Edit Search.
3. Towards the bottom left, click Add Scholarly Identifiers and enter DOIs, ISBNs, PubMed IDs, or arXiv IDs.
4. In the lower right Run Search.

Altmetric Attention for a Specific Researcher or Author

You can follow the instructions above, running a search using a complete list of the researchers work. Or, you can use one of the following options.

To Search by Researcher ORCID iD

1. Altmetric Explorer – create an account with your @stanford.edu email.
2. At the top of the page, select Edit Search.
3. Towards the bottom left, enter their ORCID iDs in the ORCID field. Learn more about ORCID.
4. In the lower right Run Search.

Note: The number of items Altmetric Explorer finds for the researcher will depend on the comprehensiveness of the researcher's ORCID record.

To Search by Researcher Name

Use Dimensions Analytics to find items published by the researcher, and export the results to Altmetric Explorer:

1. Dimensions Analytics – create an account with your @stanford.edu email.
2. From the list of filters on the left, select Researcher and then click More.
3. In the search box, enter the researcher's name and select one of the options.
4. At the bottom of the left panel, click Limit to.
5. At the top right of the results, click See attention in Altmetric Explorer, which will open an Altmetric Explorer dashboard.

Note: The number of items Dimensions Analytics finds for the researcher will depend on how well the platform has disambiguated and assigned items to researchers.

Additional Resources

Learn more about the Altmetric Dashboard.

Learn more about Altmetric Data Sources.