Altmetric announces research grant winner

Alternative metrics provider Altmetric has awarded its annual research grant for 2017 to Evan Goldstein, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Geological Sciences at the The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for his project titled 'How do scholarly citations in Wikipedia appear?'.

Launched in 2016, the Altmetric Annual Research Grant awards up to £1,500 to support a project in the altmetrics space, with the aim of facilitating research that would not otherwise be possible.

Goldstein’s project, scheduled to begin in July 2017, will explore how, when and why scholarly mentions appear on Wikipedia, with the aim of determining what proportion of Wikipedia mentions for a single journal are author-generated.

Speaking about the grant, Goldstein said: 'Wikipedia is one of the largest websites in terms of global web traffic, and represents a massive opportunity for researchers to provide long lasting outreach and engagement with non-academic audiences. Support from Altmetric will allow my research into this valuable tool to reach a broad audience via open access publication.'

Altmetric’s director of research and education Stacy Konkiel added: 'We are pleased to support Dr Goldstein’s proposed research, which will add to the growing body of knowledge on how Wikipedia spreads and accelerates scholarship.'