Altmetric badges give your Cureus article a visual summary of the attention it has received outside traditional academic metrics. They reflect mentions of your published article on various platforms, from news outlets to social media, showing who’s paying attention to your work and where.
Open your published Cureus article to find a colorful donut with a number in the middle showing how much attention your research has received.
Key takeaways:
The badge appears on the left-hand sidebar of any published Cureus article, along with a list of sources that have mentioned the publication. Clicking “See more details” opens the Altmetric details page.
Each color in the badge represents different types of engagement. It tracks mentions across a range of source types, including:
A donut with multiple hues suggests that the article has been picked up by different kinds of sources. A single-color donut indicates one type of source drives most of the attention.
The Altmetric Attention Score is the number in the middle of the donut. Altmetric weighs various sources differently. A news story and social media post might not carry the same weight, and multiple posts from the same author may have less impact than one from an independent voice.
While sources are weighted differently, the score still only measures attention volume, independent of the discussion’s tone or quality. A paper that went viral for being controversial can score just as high as one that received praise.
Mendeley readership and citation statistics appear on the Altmetric page but don’t contribute to the Attention Score.
Visibility matters for every paper. Even a modest score can have a meaningful impact.
Here are some questions to ask yourself when looking at the mentions:
Imagine hundreds of sites linking to your article, but most of them repeating the same misleading summary. Knowing that gives you a chance to clarify the findings.
Now consider the opposite: the score is modest, yet the paper appears in a clinical guideline. That single mention may carry far more weight than a week of social media activity.
Knowing how the score works matters because it keeps you from misreading attention data as impact or mistaking volume for reach. Click through the badge to read the details page, not just the score. Beyond the graphic, individual mentions provide context for the paper’s reception.
Beyond journal metrics, Altmetric badges track mentions across various media, from news to Reddit to Wikipedia.
Open the Altmetric details page, identify your audience, see where your research is being discussed, and interpret the significance of that attention for your academic profile. Use these insights to reach broader audiences.