The distinctive Altmetric Badge is now being added to Oxford University Press (OUP) book content, updating in real-time to reflect attention given to OUP books and book chapters from sources including news media, social media, and policy documents.
The world’s largest university press, OUP already uses Altmetric Badges on all journals, and is now adding the Badges to books for the first time, following the migration of its books content to the Oxford Academic digital publishing platform.
Altmetric, part of Digital Science, is a technology company that tracks and analyses the online activity around research. Featuring a variety of colors representing the different sources tracked, Altmetric Badges provide a unique and instantly recognizable at-a-glance summary of the attention for an individual OUP book. Every Altmetric Badge links through to an Altmetric details page, which provides a collated record of all of the original mentions of the book (and individual chapters where possible). In addition, the Altmetric Badge features the Altmetric Attention Score, a weighted count designed to help demonstrate the level of influence of a published work.
Eric Witherow, OUP’s Digital Product Development Manager, said: “We’ve used the Altmetric Badge on our online journals for many years, and those metrics provide valuable insights into the reach and visibility of our authors’ published work.
“We’re pleased to announce that the Altmetric Badge is now being added to our books, which is another feature of publishing those books on the new Oxford Academic platform and our move towards becoming a digital-first publisher.
“Researchers, funders, and institutions have shown increasing interest in the impact and return-on-investment of their work. By providing metrics in the form of the Altmetric Badges, we will be able to demonstrate the wider reach and impact of our world-class academic and educational resources,” Mr Witherow said.
Kathy Christian, CEO of Altmetric, said: “We’re excited to see Oxford University Press extend its use of Altmetric Badges beyond journals and, for the first time, into books.
“We’re especially proud that, as OUP is a major publisher of books in the humanities and social sciences, our Altmetric Badges will be able to further demonstrate the reach and wider influence of these publications to the world.
“OUP’s leadership in academic publishing combined with our expertise in understanding the reach and influence that content is having will benefit authors, other researchers working in that field, and the broader community.”
