Altmetric watches every encyclopaedic page on the English languiage Wikipedia for edits, and identifies when mentions of research are added.
In order for Altmetric to find a mention, the article cited must use a properly-formatted valid Wikipedia citation tag – just linking to an article isn't enough.
As an example, the Wikipedia page for Q Fever cites an article in the ASM Journal of Bacteriology. You can view the raw source text for a Wikipedia article by clicking the Edit button in the toolbar:
In the content of the article, look for the citation you want to check. A valid citation will use a piece of content called wikitext which outlines the important attributes of the citation.
Our example Q Fever article includes the text:
<ref name="pmid16547017">{{cite journal |author=Beare PA, Samuel JE, Howe D, Virtaneva K, Porcella SF, Heinzen RA |title=Genetic diversity of the Q fever agent, Coxiella burnetii, assessed by microarray-based whole-genome comparisons |journal=J. Bacteriol. |volume=188 |issue=7 |pages=2309–24 |date=April 2006 |pmid=16547017 |pmc=1428397 |doi=10.1128/JB.188.7.2309-2324.2006 |url=http://jb.asm.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=16547017}}</ref>
In this case we've got a correctly-formatted citation.
But you might find that a citation has been incorrectly added as a simple link to the paper, like the below:
<ref>[http://jb.asm.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=16547017 Genetic diversity of the Q fever agent, Coxiella burnetii, assessed by microarray-based whole-genome comparisons]</ref>
Altmetric won't be able to extract a mention from this link, and will also fail with some older citation methods.
How to add or edit a citation
To add or replace a citation in a Wikipedia article, you can click the Cite button on the toolbar, then click cite journal:
You will then be prompted to enter the details of your citation. When you've filled in the form, click Insert to add the citation to the article:
You can then save the article, and your mention will be picked up by Altmetric.
If Altmetric has missed a mention on Wikipedia
If your research is mentioned in a Wikipedia page, but Altmetric hasn't seen the mention, the first step is to check that the article contains a valid citation as described above.
If a valid citation is included in the article, but Altmetric hasn't picked it up, then please report this to Altmetric via their missing mentions of your work web form.