This is a bare-bones Python script that's intended to be used by researchers who are just learning how to query the Altmetric API, as well as those that want the freedom to tinker. You will have to tweak it to be able to locally save the data that's pulled from the API. It assumes you have a CSV file full of DOIs that you want to use to query the API.
There are Python packages already out there for querying the Altmetric API in Python, but for a variety of reasons you may want to use a simple script instead. (At least, that's what I wanted when I was first starting out so I could learn how everything works, so I thought I'd share my own script for others to use, too.)
Edits welcome.
I may not be able to provide technical support, so caveat emptor.
- Make sure Python 3 is installed on your machine
- Download the script to the directory where your CSV file lives
- Open your command line tool (Terminal on Mac), navigate to the directory where the script has been downloaded, then
type
python3.6 AltmetricAPIQuery_Basic.pyto run the script - Tweak the script to meet your needs, then run it again
- Rinse and repeat
- Altmetric API documentation
- To join the Altmetric Researcher Data Access Program and get an API key issued, email [email protected].
- For a good primer on querying the Altmetric API and how to build out your script, check out this video.
- Existing Python scripts for using the Altmetric API include pyAltmetric, PyAltmetric, and Python-Altmetric