**THIS PRESS RELEASE IS UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 20 JANUARY 2021**
N.B. The Altmetric Top 100 will ofﬁcially launch on 20 January 2021 at 08:00 GMT.
The most discussed and shared research and commentary of 2020
Covid-19, racial justice, climate change, the origins of life and other crucial issues all garnered attention in2020.
January 20 2021, London, UK: From Covid-19 to engineering the perfect espresso, controversial,
important, and unusual research and scholarly editorials from across the sciences, arts, and humanities
feature in this year's Altmetric Top 100 list, released today.
The annual Altmetric Top 100 highlights research and scholarly commentary published in 2020 thatgenerated signiﬁcant international online attention and discussion - from patents and public policy
documents to mainstream media, blogs, Wikipedia and social media platforms. This year's Top 100
represents the most discussed research from all disciplines, selecting the top ﬁve works by Altmetric
Attention Score from twenty subjects.
Unsurprisingly, Covid-19 research accounts for roughly 30% of the Top 100 across many disciplines
including biomedicine, built environment and design, and economics. Virus transmission and face mask
protection were among the most heavily discussed topics.
Top articles on Covid-19 include:●●●●●Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent
SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers
Aerosol and Surface Stability of SARS-CoV-2 as Compared with SARS-CoV-1
It Is Time to Address Airborne Transmission of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
Remdesivir and chloroquine effectively inhibit the recently emerged novel coronavirus(2019-nCoV) in vitro
A modelling framework to assess the likely effectiveness of facemasks in combination with"lock-down" in managing the COVID-19 pandemic

In addition to Covid-19, two other themes emerged in this years’ Top 100: climate change and racism. Ina year that saw global lockdowns and a corresponding dip in CO2 emissions, it’s no wonder that one
article discusses exactly this. Other articles on the subject of climate change look at deforestation, therising temperatures in our oceans and greenhouse gas emissions.
Top articles on climate change include:
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Global increase in major tropical cyclone exceedance probability over the past four decades
Record-Setting Ocean Warmth Continued in 2019
Deforestation and world population sustainability: a quantitative analysis
Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass
Temporary reduction in daily global CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 forced conﬁnement

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Utilizing smart-meter data to project impacts of urban warming on residential electricity use forvulnerable populations in Southern California
Comparative Greenhouse Gas Footprinting of Online versus Traditional Shopping for
Fast-Moving Consumer Goods: A Stochastic ApproachOn the topic of racial justice, two articles in the Top 100 discuss and reﬂect on police violence andreform whilst others discuss the subject of institutional racism in academia.
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Mapping fatal police violence across U.S. metropolitan areas: Overall rates and racial/ethnic
inequities, 2013-2017
Active learning narrows achievement gaps for underrepresented students in undergraduate
science, technology, engineering, and mathFive Years after Ferguson: Reﬂecting on Police Reform and What's Ahead
Decolonizing Art History
Making Black Women Scientists under White Empiricism: The Racialization of Epistemology inPhysics
Disadvantages in preparing and publishing scientiﬁc papers caused by the dominance of theEnglish language in science: The case of Colombian researchers in biological sciences

Kathy Christian, CEO, Altmetric, said: “It’s fascinating to see the trends that shape the Top 100 list each year.
In 2020, Covid-19 dominated the minds of everyone and scientiﬁc research was front and center in the global
media as pharmaceutical companies rushed to ﬁnd a vaccine for this deadly virus. But it is also important toremember that other, important, research was also taking place. Research on racial justice, climate change, theorigins of life and other crucial issues also garnered signiﬁcant attention in 2020. This list demonstrated thecrucial role that research plays in our everyday lives.”
View the full list at: https://www-staging.altmetric.com/top100/2020/
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Notes to editors
About Altmetric:
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what people are saying about published research outputs in scholarly and non-scholarly forums like themainstream media, policy documents, social networks, and blogs to provide a more robust picture of theinﬂuence and reach of scholarly work. Altmetric works with some of the biggest publishers, funders, andinstitutions around the world to deliver this data in an accessible and reliable format. Altmetric is
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