When a research output is mentioned in a source Altmetric tracks, such as a policy document, our system visits the research output landing page to match the attention to the individual publication. Altmetric looks at the source code of the page to find metadata to recognize the research output. The mention is then associated with the research output and an Altmetric Details Page is created. 

Some of Altmetric’s sources, such as Mendeley readership and Dimensions citations, don’t contribute to the Altmetric Attention Score. If a record doesn’t have an Altmetric Attention Score, we usually don’t create a Details Page. 

Journal articles with a CrossRef registered DOI only need to have the DOI meta tag in the source code, because Altmetric has built a special integration with CrossRef that allows the remaining necessary metadata to be retrieved directly from the CrossRef API.

This means that we are able to gather the research output title, author name(s), and electronic publication date directly from CrossRef, without the need for that information to also be available in the meta tags of the research output page. This also means that if any amendments to the bibliographic information need to be made, they can be made directly with CrossRef and Altmetric will update the relevant information on the Altmetric Details Pages automatically.

This integration only applies to CrossRef-registered DOIs assigned to journal articles -- DOIs from other services, such as DataCite, must meet our minimum metadata requirements. 

What happens if the metadata on my Details Page is inaccurate?

Altmetric checks CrossRef daily to see if there have been new updates to the journal article metadata. If you are a publisher and notice an error in the bibliographic data on a Details Page, please contact CrossRef directly to update the information. 

If you are an author, please contact your publisher directly and request that they correct the bibliographic information for the journal article record in CrossRef. Once the update has been made in CrossRef, the corresponding update will appear correctly on the Altmetric Details Pages approximately within 2-3 business days.

Example

This article was published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology in September of 2018. The metadata was deposited in CrossRef and the Altmetric Details Page reflects the same information.