Altmetric starts tracking mentions on Sina Weibo

Altmetric has begun tracking mentions of academic articles on the Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo. The company says that this data will shortly be fully integrated into existing Altmetric tools.

The mentions collated will be visible to users via the Altmetric Explorer, a web-based application that allows users to browse the online mentions of any academic article, and, where licensed, via the article metrics data on publisher platforms. Sina Weibo, which was launched in 2009, has become one of the largest social media sites in China, and is most often likened to Twitter. Altmetric says that integrating this data will enable is users to see a much more global view of the attention an article has received.  

Euan Adie, founder of Altmetric, explained: ‘One of the requests we see most often from publishers is for us track systems like Sina Weibo. With half a billion users and some 100 million messages per day, this will be a great supplement to the sources authors already see mentions from.’