What Academic Research Captured the Public’s Imagination in 2016? #altmetrictop100

It’s Top 100 time again! Every year, our portfolio company Altmetric dig into their database to identify the journal articles that have received the most attention online in the sources they track, and highlight them to showcase the online engagement surrounding research.

Check out the full 2016 list here

Some big key themes really stand out this year; the impact of technology on humanity, space discovery, and of course the huge impacts of the ZIKA virus all feature heavily. Studies in Medical and Health Sciences make up nearly half of the list, with issues relating to Research and Reproducibility also gaining a lot of interest:

The Top 100 podcast! For the first time ever Digital Science teamed up with Altmetric to make a podcast to accompany the release of the list! Featuring interviews with the editors of NEJM and JAMA and discussions with authors of some of the top papers, the podcast offers a great insight into the research behind the papers and the attention that surrounds it.

Listen to the podcast

Digging in to the data

The data for the list was collated on the 15th of November this year, and represents the most popular items published and shared since mid-November 2015. Together, the papers that made the list have received:

Featuring contributions from authors at top institutions around the world, many of the articles in the list were made available to a broader audience via Open Access licensing or limited time free-to-view options provided by the publishers:

See the full infographic on Figsahre  

What’s your favourite research from 2016? Join the conversation on the hashtag #altmetrictop100.