Understanding the impact of research on policy using Altmetric data

Abstract

Usage, sharing, and, discussion data sourced from the scholarly and social web (altmetrics) are being increasingly recognized as tools for understanding the diverse impacts that research can have on the world. One important impact is the downstream effect that research-backed policy can have on the lives of the average citizen.

For that reason, we have developed text-mining techniques to discover mentions of research outputs in policy documents created by diverse groups like the International Monetary Fund, World Health Organization, and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. By automatically identifying references to scholarly content in policy documents, we aim to help researchers and institutions to better understand the “real world” uses of their work.

In this poster, we explain our current process for sourcing, scraping, validating, and sharing these important data. We also include case studies that illustrate how policy data mined by Altmetric are being used.

Presented by Terry Bucknell, Product Sales Manager, Digital Science