Scientific Impact Assessment

Use this skill to measure the reach of a paper with citation, attention, and journal-level context.

Instructions

1. Prefer a DOI or OpenAlex work ID as input.

• If you only have a title, use /crossref-lookup first to resolve a DOI before running this skill.

1. Use the bundled CLI:

• In this repository: skills/scientific-impact-assessment/scripts/measure-impact
• After installation: ~/.agents/skills/scientific-impact-assessment/scripts/measure-impact

1. OpenAlex is the default source for paper-level citation data.

• The CLI retrieves cited_by_count, publication year, journal/source name, and citation history from OpenAlex.

1. Altmetric is optional and should be treated as conditional enrichment.

• Current Altmetric documentation says an API key is required for Details Page API access.
• If ALTMETRIC_API_KEY is not available, the CLI should report Altmetric as unavailable instead of failing.

1. Journal-level impact factors come from the curated references table in references/journal_metrics_2024.tsv.

• These are curated public web values, mostly from official publisher pages.
• The Science row uses a labeled third-party fallback because no public official AAAS JIF page was located during skill creation on March 19, 2026.

1. Keep paper-level and journal-level metrics separate in the final answer.

• Do not present journal impact factor as a proxy for article quality.
• Do not present Altmetric attention as equivalent to scholarly citation impact.

1. If the journal is not in the curated table, return the OpenAlex result anyway and say the journal-level reference lookup was not available.

Quick Reference

Input Requirements

• Python 3
• One of:
• --doi <doi>
• --openalex-id <id>
• Optional:
• --mailto <email> for OpenAlex polite-pool identification
• --altmetric-api-key <key> or ALTMETRIC_API_KEY
• --output <path>
• --format json|text

Output

• OpenAlex-derived paper metadata including:
• title
• DOI
• OpenAlex ID
• publication year
• citation count
• citation history by year
• journal/source name
• Altmetric summary when an API key is available and the record exists
• curated journal-level impact-factor context when the journal matches the bundled references table
• explicit status values when Altmetric or journal-level lookup is unavailable

Quality Gates

• [ ] The input is resolved to a DOI or OpenAlex work ID before lookup
• [ ] OpenAlex citation data is reported separately from journal-level metrics
• [ ] Altmetric is marked optional and unavailable when no API key is configured
• [ ] Journal impact factors are read from the bundled references table, not improvised from memory
• [ ] Any third-party journal metric source is labeled as such in the output

Examples

Example 1: DOI-based report

skills/scientific-impact-assessment/scripts/measure-impact \
  --doi 10.1038/s41586-024-00000-0 \
  --format text

Example 2: OpenAlex ID plus Altmetric

skills/scientific-impact-assessment/scripts/measure-impact \
  --openalex-id W2741809807 \
  --mailto [email protected] \
  --altmetric-api-key "$ALTMETRIC_API_KEY" \
  --output impact-report.json

Troubleshooting

Issue: Altmetric is always unavailable. Solution: Check whether ALTMETRIC_API_KEY is set. Current Altmetric docs require a key for all Details Page API endpoints.

Issue: The journal-level lookup is empty. Solution: The journal is probably not in references/journal_metrics_2024.tsv yet. Return the OpenAlex paper metrics and add the journal later if you can source a public metric page.

Issue: Only a title is available. Solution: Resolve the title to a DOI first with /crossref-lookup, then rerun this skill using the DOI for a deterministic lookup.

Related Skills

• /crossref-lookup — resolve DOIs before scoring impact
• /polars-dovmed — retrieve the full text that backs the impact claim