Introduction Alternative metrics are any digital indicator of online behaviour around a web-native item – these can range from blog posts to comments to shares to download. Since launching in 2012, Altmetric.com collects online metrics and metadata around millions of digital research and communications outputs ranging from press releases to peer reviewed journal publications. Using automated and manual data gathering techniques, we have conducted sentiment and stakeholder affiliation analyses of data from the National Institutes for Occupation Health and Safety to help identify key stakeholder networks in the OSH community, how they engage, what platforms they use, and what they’re saying.

Methods We reviewed NIOSH attention data across the 16 platforms Altmetric tracks using the Altmetric Explorer platform. We grouped those platforms into ‘red flag’ and ‘green flag’ platforms with distinct sentiment patterns. Red flag platforms were platforms were the sentiment was most likely to be negative or critical. Green flag platforms were platforms where qualitative engagement was most likely to be positive. Blue flag platforms had no sentiment and simply provided findings without editorialising about them.

Results NIOSH’s break out using this flagging system was unique and broke out as follows. Red flags included blogs, Reddit, and peer review sites. News, Twitter, and Wikipedia tend to have non-editorialised reporting of NIOSH communications and solely need to be monitored for accuracy – blue flag platforms. Green flag platforms with high positive sentiment likelihood include F1000, Facebook, YouTube, policy and syllabi citations. Stakeholder analysis is ongoing of who engages on these platforms is ongoing and may not be ready for this presentation.

Conclusions Peer-reviewed OSH journal literature and web-native digital communications are underserved by existing metrics like citations and web analytics. New web-based alternative metrics and provide deep qualitative data on what communities are being reach, when, on what platforms, and what the content of their engagement is. These new metrics can play a vital role in shaping communications across OSH organisations globally