On the surface, Altmetric and traditional media monitoring tools seem to provide much the same service; the ability to track, collate and report on online conversations. In reality, although there are similarities, they are some key differences to note which mean that when used in conjunction, these two tools become a powerful combined resource for gathering the insights you need.

Media Monitoring

• Tracks conversations in news and social media

• Relies on keyword or topic search to gather results 

Altmetric

• Tracks mentions in news, social media, policy documents, patents, Wikipedia, and other scholarly and non-scholarly forums

• Links mentions to a specific research output, reducing the need for data cleaning and enabling you to easily compare results

• Provides an ‘Attention Score’ indicator to help you identify where there is interesting activity to explore

There are some functions that both platforms share:

• Track trends and changes in attention and online conversations over time

• Save searches and run reports

• Dig into the details of what is being said, and by whom

• Demographic data to help you measure global reach

• Easy integration with existing systems

• Individual seat or company-wide access available 

Using Altmetric in tandem with existing media monitoring services provides a more robust process for capturing the detail of the conversation around your research, and celebrating your successes with a broader audience:

• Ensure your research is being interpreted correctly - attention is linked to individual research outputs, making it possible to monitor the reception and ensure it is being understood

• Benefit from real-time updates and functionality that make it easy to create an overview of all of the attention surrounding your research via shareable reports

• Embed dynamic visualizations in your public or internal websites, enabling visitors to those pages to see the influence and reach of your publications