research papers on toilet paper

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• RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT
• 19 June 2020

Why the pandemic unleashed a frenzy of toilet-paper buying

Precious commodities: shoppers in Bangkok stock up on toilet paper and kitchen roll. Credit: Jack Taylor/AFP/Getty

People who felt seriously threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic are more likely to have stockpiled toilet paper in the pandemic’s early days than are those who were less worried about the disease.

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Nature 582 , 463 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01836-1

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Toilet paper is an unexpected source of PFAS in wastewater, study says

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances in Toilet Paper and the Impact on Wastewater Systems ” Environmental Science & Technology Letters

Wastewater can provide clues about a community’s infectious disease status, and even its prescription and illicit drug use. But looking at sewage also provides information on persistent and potentially harmful compounds, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), that get released into the environment. Now, researchers in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology Letters report an unexpected source of these substances in wastewater systems — toilet paper.

PFAS have been detected in many personal care products, such as cosmetics and cleansers , that people use every day and then wash down the drain. But not many researchers have considered whether toilet paper, which also ends up in wastewater, could be a source of the chemicals. Some paper manufacturers add PFAS when converting wood into pulp, which can get left behind and contaminate the final paper product. In addition, recycled toilet paper could be made with fibers that come from materials containing PFAS. So, Timothy Townsend and colleagues wanted to assess this potential input to wastewater systems, and test toilet paper and sewage for these compounds.

The researchers gathered toilet paper rolls sold in North, South and Central America; Africa; and Western Europe and collected sewage sludge samples from U.S. wastewater treatment plants. Then they extracted PFAS from the paper and sludge solids and analyzed them for 34 compounds. The primary PFAS detected were disubstituted polyfluoroalkyl phosphates (diPAPs) — compounds that can convert to more stable PFAS such as perfluorooctanoic acid, which is potentially carcinogenic. Specifically, 6:2 diPAP was the most abundant in both types of samples but was present at low levels, in the parts-per-billion range.

Then, the team combined their results with data from other studies that included measurements of PFAS levels in sewage and per capita toilet paper use in various countries. They calculated that toilet paper contributed about 4% of the 6:2 diPAP in sewage in the U.S. and Canada, 35% in Sweden and up to 89% in France. Despite the fact that North Americans use more toilet paper than people living in many other countries, the calculated percentages suggest that most PFAS enter the U.S. wastewater systems from cosmetics, textiles, food packaging or other sources, the researchers say. They add that this study identifies toilet paper as a source of PFAS to wastewater treatment systems, and in some places, it can be a major source.

The authors acknowledge funding from the Hinkley Center for Solid and Hazardous Waste Management.

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Adam S. Peer

• Life Cycle Analysis: Comparing Toilet Paper and Bidet Use

Consumer action to reduce environmental impact often requires a drastic change in lifestyle, an increase in cost, or a loss of convenience. Given the current environmental crisis, however, consumer selection of environmentally friendly products is becoming increasingly necessary, despite barriers to these actions. Shifting from toilet paper use to bidet seems to be an easily achievable, environmentally friendly switch for consumers. This study analyzes the environmental impacts of making this switch in U.S. homes by conducting a life cycle assessment (LCA). This study hypothesizes that switching from toilet paper use to bidet use will likely lead to a lighter environmental footprint for two reasons. First, papermaking is an environmentally intense process. Second, the switch replaces a single-use product with a durable product. Data was obtained from public sources including consumer surveys, retail data, and U.S. patents. To create a toilet paper model, this LCA relied on a model for similar paper products, and to create a bidet model, it estimated the components of the bidet. According to this LCA, using a bidet instead of toilet paper reduces the environmental impact on all categories except water. The dashboard on the next page shows that using a bidet instead of toilet paper has a significant impact on reducing various impacts. The bidet water use is a moderate amount in real terms, but because toilet paper consumes relatively little water, it appears to be a comparatively large percentage increase.

Environmental Impact Reduction by Switching From Toilet Paper Use to Bidet Use

Note. Source: Peer, A. (2022a, December 16). A9. Bidet (A. Peer) [Cloud life cycle assessment tool]. Earthster. https://app.earthster.org/cycles/226196 and Peer, A. (2022b, December 16). A9. Toilet Paper (A. Peer) [Cloud life cycle assessment tool]. Earthster. https://app.earthster.org/cycles/226186

As switching has a decreased environmental impact, the LCA also took into account how many other people I would need to persuade to make a similar change to offset my own carbon footprint. If I want to offset my 52,000 kg carbon footprint, I would need to convince 609 other people to do the same. Using a bidet instead of toilet paper could help reduce their environmental impact without a loss of lifestyle, convenience or increased cost. Increasing consumer adoption of sustainability could have a positive impact on the environment.

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Removal of toilet paper fibers from residential wastewater: a life cycle assessment

• Research Article
• Published: 26 June 2023
• Volume 30 , pages 84254–84266, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Xiaoyu Wang 1 , 2 ,
• Guoqiang Liu 3 ,
• Weimin Sun 1 , 2 , 4 ,
• Zhiguo Cao 4 ,
• Huaqing Liu 1 , 2 ,
• Yiqun Xiong 1 , 2 ,
• Baoqin Li 1 , 2 ,
• Xiaoxu Sun 1 , 2 ,
• Yongbin Li 1 , 2 ,
• Rui Xu 1 , 2 ,
• Duanyi Huang 1 , 2 &
• Pin Gao   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8762-5844 1 , 2 , 5  

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Toilet paper has been reported as one of the major insoluble pollutant components in the influent of wastewater treatment plants. Toilet paper fibers contribute to a large production of sewage sludge, resulting in a high treatment cost and high energy consumption. To find energy-efficient, cost-effective, and environment-friendly technologies for fiber removal and resource recovery from wastewater, a life-cycle assessment (LCA) was performed to analyze the wastewater treatment processes, including a sieving process for removing and recovering suspended solids before the biodegradation units. Based on the LCA results, it was estimated that the sieve screening process saved 8.57% of energy consumption. The construction phase of sieving consumed 1.31% energy cost compared with the operation phase. Environmental impact analysis showed that sieving reduced the impacts of climate change, human toxicity, fossil depletion, and particulate matter formation, which reduced the total normalized environmental impacts by 9.46%. The life-cycle analysis of the removal of toilet paper fibers from wastewater revealed the need to use more efficient methods to enhance the recovery of cellulose fibers.

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Acknowledgements

We thank LetPub for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.

This work was supported by Guangdong Foundation for Program of Science and Technology Research (Grant No. 2020B1111530001), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. U20A20109, 42007357, and 51978136), Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (Grant Nos. 2021A1515011374 and 2021A1515011461), GDAS’ Project of Science and Technology Development (Grant Nos. 2019GDASYL-0103052, 2020GDASYL-20200103088, 2020GDASYL-20200102014, and 2021GDASYL-20210103048), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangzhou (Grant No. 201904010366), and the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (Grant No. 2019B121205006).

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National-Regional Joint Engineering Research Center for Soil Pollution Control and Remediation in South China, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Integrated Agroenvironmental Pollution Control and Management, Institute of Eco-environmental and Soil Sciences, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510650, China

Xiaoyu Wang, Weimin Sun, Huaqing Liu, Yiqun Xiong, Baoqin Li, Xiaoxu Sun, Yongbin Li, Rui Xu, Duanyi Huang & Pin Gao

Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Laboratory for Environmental Pollution and Control, Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510640, China

School of Environment, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China

Guoqiang Liu

School of Environment, Key Laboratory for Yellow River and Huai River Water Environment and Pollution Control, Ministry of Education, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, 453007, China

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Xiaoyu Wang designed the study, analyzed the data, and wrote the original draft. Guoqiang Liu performed the original toilet paper screening study and provide the data. Zhiguo Cao, Huaqing Liu, and Yiqun Xiong revised the manuscript. Weimin Sun and Pin Gao conceptualized the study, formal analyzed, reviewed, and edited the manuscript. Baoqin Li, Xiaoxu Sun, Yongbin Li, Rui Xu, and Duanyi Huang commented and reviewed the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.

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Wang, X., Liu, G., Sun, W. et al. Removal of toilet paper fibers from residential wastewater: a life cycle assessment. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30 , 84254–84266 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28291-5

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Received : 15 December 2022

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Published : 26 June 2023

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28291-5

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The Best Toilet Paper

By Nancy Redd

Nancy Redd is a writer who covers health and grooming. She has tested dozens of hair dryers, toothbrushes, and pairs of period underwear.

The average American uses an astounding 141 rolls of toilet paper a year . If you’re going through that much tissue, we think it’s worth settling on a brand you actively like (you could also consider cutting back, with the help of a bidet ). Over the course of 10 months, we tushy-tested 36 varieties of toilet paper. And we concluded that Unilever’s Seventh Generation 100% Recycled Extra Soft & Strong Bath Tissue and Procter & Gamble’s Charmin Ultra Strong are the most likely to please the most people. Amazon’s Presto! Ultra-Soft Toilet Paper , our budget pick, is great for folks looking for soft-enough toilet paper that costs less.

Everything we recommend

Seventh Generation 100% Recycled Extra Soft & Strong Bath Tissue

The best sustainable toilet paper.

Seventh Generation 100% Recycled toilet paper is a soft, strong, low-lint offering. And it’s economically as well as environmentally friendly.

Buying Options

Charmin Ultra Strong

The best traditionally produced toilet paper.

One of the plushest of the toilet papers we tested, the strong, soft, low-lint Charmin Ultra Strong left all other traditional toilet papers … behind.

Budget pick

Amazon Presto Ultra-Soft Toilet Paper

A reliable budget toilet paper.

Amazon Presto! Ultra-Soft Toilet Paper is a tad lintier and almost imperceptibly rougher than our top picks. But our testers liked it best of all the lower-cost toilet papers we tested.

How we picked

We looked for toilet paper that felt cushy on our tushies.

Many toilet papers leave crumbles and dust on bottoms and bathroom floors—yuck.

Toilet paper that maintains its composition during wiping is critical: No one likes rips.

If a toilet paper brand is hard to find, it doesn’t matter if it’s great.

Seventh Generation 100% Recycled Extra Soft & Strong Bath Tissue is made with 100% recycled materials, but you’d never know it by the look and feel of this soft, sturdy, and lint-free toilet paper. Its price is on a par with that of traditional papers, and it was unanimously liked by testers.

Charmin Ultra Strong is a strong, low-lint, readily available toilet paper that’s slightly plusher than the Seventh Generation paper. But the Charmin paper is usually more expensive than our Seventh Generation pick, and it’s not made from sustainable or recycled materials. Of the traditional toilet papers we tested, this one was judged to be the most durable and comfortable to use.

Amazon Presto! Ultra-Soft Toilet Paper is soft and serviceable, especially for the price. Unlike our Seventh Generation pick, this one is not made from recycled materials, nor is it super-plush or extra-strong like our pick from Charmin. But Amazon’s paper gets the job done well: It’s not scratchy, doesn’t rip too easily, and doesn’t leave much lint behind.

The research

Why you should trust us, how we picked and tested, what is sustainable toilet paper, what about bamboo toilet paper, our pick: seventh generation 100% recycled extra soft & strong bath tissue, flaws but not dealbreakers, our pick: charmin ultra strong, budget pick: amazon’s presto ultra-soft toilet paper, what to look forward to, other good toilet papers, what about bidets, what about “flushable” wipes, the competition.

Wirecutter has been testing toilet paper for nearly a decade. Combined, the previous author of this guide (Kevin Purdy) and I (Nancy Redd) have spent more than 50 hours reading about and researching the paper-manufacturing industry, paper recycling, toilet paper sustainability, and how paper products are produced—and dissolved.

In 2021 and early 2022, I personally compared 36 toilet papers at home, also taking into account feedback from my husband and two kids. After I narrowed the field considerably, I recruited nine additional Wirecutter staffers and their family members. Some of them compared top sustainable brands side by side; others compared only the top-two sustainable options with favorite traditional toilet papers. All testers ranked toilet papers in terms of softness, strength, and lint levels.

I also interviewed two industry experts: Shelley Vinyard , from the Natural Resources Defense Council, a not-for-profit environmental group, and Chris McLaren , chief marketing officer at the US Forest Stewardship Council.

As Wirecutter’s senior staff writer for health, I’m not new to bathroom-related comparison testing, having written guides to tampons , toilet stools , period underwear , and portable pee funnels .

We’ve been recommending toilet papers for nearly a decade. But after the great toilet paper shortage of 2020 —and with more consumer interest and tremendous strides in the number and quality of sustainable toilet papers available—we decided to give this guide a complete overhaul. Beginning in summer 2021, we called in 36 types of toilet paper from all of the major manufacturers. These included our three existing picks (from Charmin and Cottonelle), several smaller brands, and store-brand (generic) options.

Eleven of the 36 toilet papers we tried were made from what the toilet paper industry calls “ sustainable materials ,” like recycled paper. The rest were traditional toilet papers, made from trees cut down specifically to be ground into pulp for making toilet paper. We did test some three-ply toilet papers and one-ply toilet papers. But most of the papers we tested—and all of our eventual picks—were two-ply (two thin layers of paper lightly pressed or glued together).

Our initial testing examined various factors for each entrant:

Comfort: We judged softness subjectively during wiping. Our blind tushy testing had initial testers (my family members and me) rating all 36 toilet papers on a scale of 1 (those that felt like sandpaper or looked transparent like facial tissue) to 10 (opaque toilet papers that felt obscenely plush).

Lint factor: I wiped the sheets on velvet to test how much lint or dust was left behind, dismissing toilet papers that shed large amounts of residue.

Sturdiness: I poked and pulled sheets in multiple directions and with varying levels of pressure to test strength and “rippiness,” noting the ones that held up.

Once the testing pool was whittled down considerably, I sent rolls to nine additional staffers, who judged each toilet paper without knowledge of which had performed best in the first round of testing. Several testers were sent the papers sans packaging, so they were unaware of the brand or whether a roll was made from recycled paper, bamboo, or traditional trees. The staffers (and, in some cases, their families) ranked the contenders in terms of softness, lintiness, and strength. After those results came in, I also considered secondary factors, including:

• Certification: Toilet papers that bear a certification label from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) have been evaluated by the organization and found to be manufactured with responsibly sourced fibers. Though there are other certifications available, such as from the Swiss Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC, which certifies our budget pick), FSC is considered by environmental leaders (such as the World Wildlife Fund ) to have the most rigorous universal standards. Although we didn’t consider FSC certification to be a requirement, we did weigh papers with FSC certification more favorably.
• Additives: Most toilet papers have “proprietary” formulas of chemicals and conditioners that companies typically won’t disclose. We asked the manufacturers of our top picks whether their toilet paper contained any animal ingredients or byproducts (because some do), and we also asked about what they use to purify and whiten their toilet papers. In 1998, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began requiring most paper mills to limit elemental chlorine from being used in toilet paper production, due to carcinogenic concerns. Today almost all toilet papers are still purified and whitened using chlorine-based disinfectants and other undisclosed chemicals. Our Seventh Generation pick’s manufacturing process is completely free of chlorine. But its toilet paper is made from recycled papers that may have once been bleached, so it can’t be considered totally chlorine-free (which is most ideal ). The use of additives did not make or break our toilet paper picks, but they did inform our evaluation.
• Availability: I searched stores (online and in person) regularly to check fluctuations in price and availability, noting whether brands were frequently out of stock.

Until our March 2022 update, we recommended only toilet papers made from virgin wood pulp—also referred to as “traditional” toilet paper—because none of the environmentally friendlier toilet papers we’d tested came close in softness and strength. Since our original testing for this guide began, nearly a decade ago, there have been tremendous strides in the area of “sustainable” toilet paper. Sustainable toilet paper is made from either recycled fibers or from more environmentally friendly primary sources, such as responsibly sourced bamboo. We found several of the sustainable toilet papers we tested in 2021 and 2022 to be comparable in comfort and strength to traditional toilet papers, as well as comparatively much less dusty.

With growing concerns about climate change and deforestation , there is an increasing push to eliminate the “tree to toilet pipeline,” which is the cutting down of forests full of trees just to make toilet paper, said Shelley Vinyard, co-author of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s The Issue With Tissue (PDF) report. Since 2019, the NRDC —a not-for-profit environmental group—has evaluated dozens of toilet papers and ranked them, taking into consideration factors such as whether potentially carcinogenic chlorine is used to purify or whiten the fibers and the type of certifications held by the fiber suppliers to demonstrate their commitment to responsible sourcing. The latest report ranked toilet paper made from recycled fibers higher than toilet paper made from other sustainable materials, such as bamboo. “What we want most is circular solutions to avoid sending waste to the landfill, so, with toilet paper, that means post-consumer recycled content is the gold standard,” Vinyard said.

Chris McLaren, chief marketing officer at the US Forest Stewardship Council, agreed with Vinyard’s assessment, with the caveat that it’s not always possible to incorporate circular solutions because there isn’t as much used paper to recycle as there once was. “The digitalization of society (such as online media instead of newspapers and magazines) has caused there to be fewer recycled papers to utilize in the making of sustainable paper products,” he explained. McLaren said this issue of sustainability goes far beyond toilet paper, and that without enough recycled paper to use, some toilet paper will always need to come from new materials “to keep up with demand.” FSC certification is one way to ensure that, as McLaren put it, “forests are well-managed to stay healthy."

The toilet paper you decide to use is obviously a personal choice. Seventh Generation’s 100% Recycled Extra Soft & Strong is FSC-certified to be made from 100% recycled materials. Charmin Ultra Strong has a lesser type of FSC certification that guarantees at least 70% of materials are from FSC-approved forests; the other 30% of materials are considered acceptable but are not FSC-certified. Amazon Presto! Ultra-Soft is not FSC-certified, but it is PEFC -certified (an industry certification considered to have less-rigorous standards than those of FSC). As of February 2022, the PEFC certification does not appear anywhere on Presto! Ultra-Soft’s new packaging, though an Amazon spokesperson confirmed it was PEFC-certified.

Bamboo has become an increasingly popular alternative source material for toilet paper, and we tested several bamboo brands for this guide, including Betterway , Who Gives A Crap , and No. 2. Toilet paper made from bamboo is often promoted as an eco-friendly solution since bamboo grows so quickly and can be easily replenished, unlike a boreal forest . But bamboo toilet paper isn’t necessarily better for the environment, and it’s generally more expensive and not as soft as other papers.

When bamboo toilet paper is FSC-certified to be sourced responsibly—that is, ecosystems aren’t being wiped out and forests aren’t being clear-cut to plant homogenous swaths of bamboo—it is a great alternative option, McLaren and Vinyard both said. But few bamboo toilet paper companies have pursued certification. Two exceptions are Betterway and Cloud Paper , which are both FSC-certified to source 100% of their bamboo from suppliers committed to responsibly managing their crops and surrounding environments.

Seventh Generation 100% Recycled Extra Soft & Strong Bath Tissue is the cubic zirconia of toilet paper: With close scrutiny, an astute toilet-paper user might notice something’s different. But we think the average person would be hard-pressed to guess that this one is formulated with 100% recycled paper, instead of traditional virgin tree pulp. This soft, supple, nearly lint-free toilet paper is manufactured without bleach or any animal byproducts. And it was a true diamond in the rough among our testing pool of 11 environmentally friendly toilet papers.

Although we found many of the sustainable bath tissues we tested to be scratchy, Seventh Generation’s toilet paper is not. It also held its own against traditional toilet papers in softness and strength—testers found it to be durable and dependable, with no reports of accidental ripping during use. During the velvet rub tests to check for crumbling, pilling, and lint, the paper remained intact and left behind almost no residue.

Like traditional toilet paper (but unlike many of its sustainable competitors), Seventh Generation’s Extra Soft & Strong toilet paper is white in color. Yet this is due only to the color of the recycled papers used to make it; there is no chlorine used in the manufacturing process. This toilet paper is two-ply, and both sides are soft, but only one side features an embossed pattern (which is meant to help with wiping, though its usefulness is debatable). Seventh Generation says this paper is safe for septic systems and low-flush-volume toilets, and that no animal ingredients or byproducts are used in the manufacturing process.

Seventh Generation toilet paper is readily available in stores and online. Its largest offering, a 24-pack (240 sheets per roll), is normally about $22, or 0.38¢ ($0.0038) per sheet. Since it’s often on sale for less, Seventh Generation toilet paper is one of the most economical of the sustainable papers, and it’s similar (or even cheaper) in price to many traditional toilet papers.

Princess and the Pee types may notice that Seventh Generation is slightly less soft and a tad less strong than Charmin, our traditional toilet paper pick. However, one of our testers of sustainable toilet paper didn’t even realize that it was a recycled option, mistaking the Seventh Generation paper as a “control” traditional roll.

Price: about 0.38¢ ($0.0038) per sheet (depending on pack size and store sales)

Options: four, 12, or 24 rolls (240 sheets per roll)

Manufactured in: USA and Canada

FSC certification: Yes, certified to be 100% recycled.

Chlorine used in processing: No. Only hydrogen peroxide is used for the purification process. However, the recycled office paper and newspaper used may have been initially processed with chlorine, so the toilet paper cannot be called totally chlorine-free.

Ingredients: recycled paper fibers, hydrogen peroxide, “proprietary ingredients to control microbial growth and to aid in the wet strength of the product,” according to a Seventh Generation spokesperson (the company says this paper contains no animal ingredients or byproducts)

Of the 36 toilet papers we tested, the supple Charmin Ultra Strong stood out as the one with the best combination of strength and softness, with the added bonus of being low-lint and crumble-free. As bathroom tissue goes, our testers found this one to be foolproof—it tackled the toughest of toilet trips with nary a breakthrough finger rip, but it also felt pampering on our most delicate body parts. Our velvet rub tests found that Charmin Ultra Strong left behind very little lint, with no pilling or crumbling.

Charmin Ultra Strong is two-ply, and though only one side features an embossed pattern (like the Seventh Generation toilet paper), our testers confirmed that both sides felt super-soft. A Charmin spokesperson told us that it’s safe for septic systems and low-flush-volume toilets.

This toilet paper is available almost everywhere bathroom tissue is sold, in-store and online, and it has rarely been out of stock.

This traditional toilet paper is formulated from virgin tree pulp, but it is FSC-certified to have the majority of its materials sourced responsibly. It is manufactured using a purification/whitening process that is elemental chlorine-free but not totally chlorine-free.

When not on sale, Charmin Ultra Strong is slightly more expensive per sheet than Seventh Generation’s paper. The largest pack you can buy is a Mega roll 30-pack (264 sheets per roll) for about $31.50, or 0.39¢ ($0.0039) per sheet. That’s more than our other picks cost, but this paper is often on sale, and manufacturer coupons abound.

Charmin could not confirm whether animal ingredients or byproducts are used in the manufacturing process.

Price: about 0.39¢ ($0.0039) per sheet (depending on pack size and store sales)

Options: six, 12, 18, 24, or 30 Mega rolls (264 sheets per roll); eight, 12, or 18 Super Mega rolls (396 sheets per roll)

Manufactured in: USA

FSC certification: Yes, certified to be FSC-Mix, meaning at least 70% of the tree fibers used are responsibly sourced.

Chlorine used in processing: Yes. The purification/whitening process is elemental chlorine-free, but not totally chlorine-free.

Ingredients: wood pulp, water-based adhesive, and proprietary conditioners (a spokesperson for Charmin said it may contain animal ingredients or byproducts)

Although it isn’t quite as soft as our top picks from Seventh Generation and Charmin , Amazon’s Presto! Ultra-Soft Toilet Paper is a reliable traditional toilet paper that’s comfortable to use. However, it comes only in a large box of 24 rolls (four packages of six), so this may not work well for people with very limited storage space. At around 0.31¢ ($0.0031) per sheet, Presto! paper costs at least 25% less than our top picks—and using Amazon’s Subscribe & Save service could bring the price down by an additional 5% to 15%.

In our velvet rub test, we found Amazon Presto! left behind more lint than our other picks—but not too much. It also did not pill or rip easily while wiping. Most testers noticed only that it was less soft than our other picks, when they were asked to compare them side by side. The Amazon paper is two-ply, and both sides are soft (though, as with our other picks, only one side features the embossed pattern). Amazon says this tissue is safe for septic systems and low-flow toilets.

Amazon! Presto is rarely out of stock, but you can purchase it only online (on Amazon, of course). And it can be purchased only in a set of 24 Mega rolls (308 sheets per roll). This is a traditional toilet paper that is formulated from virgin tree pulp, and it is not FSC-certified. The pulp used to make the toilet paper is purified/whitened through a process that utilizes chlorine dioxide, making it elemental chlorine-free but not totally chlorine-free. Amazon confirmed that no animal ingredients or byproducts are used in the manufacturing process.

Price: about 0.31¢ ($0.0031) per sheet (less if you use Amazon’s Subscribe & Save service)

Options: Amazon’s Presto! Ultra-Soft comes in only one size: 24 Mega rolls (308 sheets per roll)

FSC certification: No, though it is certified by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).

Chlorine used in processing: Yes. The purification/whitening process uses chlorine dioxide and thus is elemental chlorine-free, but it is not totally chlorine-free.

Ingredients: wood pulp and proprietary process chemicals “to help deliver properties like wet strength to the product,” according to an Amazon spokesperson (a spokesperson for Amazon said it contained no animal ingredients or byproducts)

We’re currently testing the premium version of celebrity-backed Cloud Paper, a well-liked, if slightly expensive, 100% FSC-certified bamboo toilet paper bleached using a TCF (totally chlorine free) method.

If you’re looking for a budget toilet paper and prefer to shop in-store: Walmart’s Great Value Ultra Strong and Target’s Up & Up Premium Ultra Soft are both extremely similar to our budget pick, Amazon’s Presto! Ultra-Soft . In fact, until late 2021, all three products had the same manufacturer license from the Sustainable Forestry Initiative on their packaging, as did other toilet paper made by white-label company First Quality Enterprises Inc. Although Presto! Ultra-Soft changed its packaging to omit this license number, the new packaging links to www.prestopaperpatents.com , which discusses First Quality Tissue at length. If you find either of these on sale, they’re both a good inexpensive option. But we found that Amazon’s Presto! Ultra-Soft was generally less expensive.

If you want a super-soft toilet paper and don’t mind a little butt dandruff: Cottonelle Ultra ComfortCare (our previous top pick) and the brand’s Ultra GentleCare (an aloe-infused cult favorite) are the softest toilet papers we’ve tested. However, they are also the dustiest and lintiest of all the papers we’ve tested, shedding tiny little lint bits and other residue everywhere the toilet paper touches, from bathroom cabinets to human bottoms. These are still super-comfy, super-cushy, and super-sturdy choices if you’re okay with tp residue.

If you’d prefer a toilet paper made of bamboo: Testers liked Betterway , which is soft (for bamboo toilet paper) and FSC-certified to have 100% of its fibers sourced responsibly (the best of the certifications available to bamboo papers). It comes at a higher cost than our picks, however, and it feels a lot rougher.

As an alternative to toilet paper, or as a means to reduce the amount of toilet paper you use, consider the bidet . A bidet is, essentially, a powerful water fountain in your toilet that’s meant to spray your bottom clean, hands-free, with only a square or two of toilet paper needed to dry off. (Some bidets even incorporate a bum-drying fan, potentially cutting out the need for toilet paper altogether.) Bidets have been a bathroom-hygiene staple in many parts of the world, such as Japan and Italy, for decades, and they’re gaining popularity in the US. Wirecutter testers have found bidets to be life-changing devices that can be more economical in the long run and cut your toilet paper needs by at least half. “We’re not saying people should throw out their toilet paper,” Shelley Vinyard said. “But bidets take much less water to use than the water required to make a roll of toilet paper, and they save money.”

Don’t buy wipes, unless you’re willing to put used wipes in your bathroom trash can or maintain a separate can for them. By flushing them down your toilet, you’re passing on a huge problem to your sewer system, as evidenced by sewer crises in New York City and London , and recurring problems in Miami , Ottawa , and Lake Charles, Louisiana , among other cities. For those who think they need to use wipes, we suggest they consider a bidet instead.

Sustainable toilet paper

Bamboo No. 2 Toilet Paper rolls come individually wrapped in colorful, Instagram-worthy tissue, and the packaging doesn’t use any plastic. But this toilet paper is not FSC-certified, and it’s also not as soft as our sustainable pick .

​​ Who Gives A Crap Premium Bamboo Toilet Paper also comes individually wrapped in pretty, plastic-free packaging. But it’s not as soft as our sustainable pick, nor is it FSC-certified.

Caboo Bamboo Bath Tissue was polarizing. Some testers thought it was perfectly serviceable, but others found it to be rough and not strong enough.

Tushy’s bamboo toilet paper also comes individually wrapped in pretty, plastic-free packaging, but it is very thin and scratchy.

Reel Tree-Free bamboo toilet paper feels rough compared to other bamboo toilet papers we tried.

PlantPaper bamboo toilet paper is FSC-certified, but it’s also rough and thin, and it ripped too easily.

Who Gives A Crap 100% Recycled Toilet Paper is extremely popular among sustainability-minded butt wipers, and it comes individually wrapped in attractive, plastic-free packaging. But it felt rough to us.

Neither Whole Foods’ 365 Sustainably Soft recycled toilet paper nor its 100% recycled toilet paper felt as strong or as comfortable to use as our picks.

A spokesperson from Seventh Generation told us its Natural Unbleached Bathroom Tissue (also made from recycled paper) had been discontinued.

Traditional toilet paper

Aria Premium Earth Friendly Bath Tissue scored very high in comfort among test tushies, but it’s expensive and dusty.

Neither Amazon’s Presto! Ultra-Strong nor its thicker three-ply option were worth the additional expense over our budget pick , the same brand’s Ultra-Soft.

Costco’s Kirkland Signature was the widest toilet paper in our test pool (the rolls often don’t fit on regular holders). But that was the most impressive feature of this otherwise-mediocre paper. It was neither the softest nor the strongest in our testing pool, and it was rather dusty. This was surprising given the longstanding reputation of this toilet paper; diehard Costco toilet paper users on Reddit theorize that pandemic-related supply-chain issues have caused the company’s bath tissues to devolve.

Charmin Essentials Strong and Charmin Essentials Soft felt scratchy and seemed to require a lot more paper to finish the task than our picks.

When directly compared with our top picks, Charmin Ultra Soft , Quilted Northern Ultra Soft & Strong , and Quilted Northern Ultra Plush were not ultra-soft, ultra-plush, or ultra-anything to our testers.

Charmin Ultra Gentle and Scott ComfortPlus were linty and ripped too easily.

Scott 1000 was translucent and easily ripped.

Great Value’s Soft & Strong , Walmart’s Cascades , Cottonelle Ultra CleanCare , Virtue , and  Angel Soft were not as soft or sturdy as our picks.

Amazon Solimo , Kirkland Signature Ultra Soft , Scott Extra Soft , Scott Naturals Tube-Free, and White Cloud Ultra Strong & Soft were tested (and dismissed) in an earlier round of testing. They have since been discontinued.

—additional reporting by Kevin Purdy

This guide was edited by Ellen Lee and Kalee Thompson.

Emily Flitter, My Tireless Quest for a Tubeless Wipe , The New York Times , February 28, 2020

Olivia Young, Eco-Friendly Toilet Paper: Bamboo vs. Recycled , Treehugger.com , December 6, 2021

Shelley Vinyard, co-author of The Issue With Tissue report (PDF) , phone interview , December 1, 2021

Chris McLaren, chief marketing officer at the US Forest Stewardship Council , phone interview , February 9, 2022

Meet your guide

Nancy Redd is a senior staff writer covering health and grooming at Wirecutter. She is a GLAAD Award–nominated on-air host and a New York Times best-selling author. Her latest nonfiction book, The Real Body Manual , is a visual health and wellness guide for young adults of all genders. Her other books include Bedtime Bonnet and Pregnancy, OMG!

Further reading

There’s a Toilet Paper Calculator That Cuts Through ‘Mega’ and ‘Jumbo’ Marketing Claims

by Elissa Sanci

Frustrated by confusing toilet paper marketing language, these amateur deal finders created a calculator to help sort the deals from the duds.

Out of Toilet Paper? You Have Other Options. Just Don’t Flush Them!

by Doug Mahoney

Here’s how to handle TP scarcity without ruining your local water treatment systems.

Are Bidets Better for You Than Toilet Paper?

by Shannon Palus

Bidets are often marketed for their so-called medical benefits. They’ll clean your butt, sure. Can they—and should they—really do any more than that?

The Best Toilet Brush

by Kevin Purdy and Doug Mahoney

Scrubbing a toilet isn’t glamorous, but using the OXO Good Grips Compact Toilet Brush —which includes a sleek canister—makes it less of a chore.

East Kingdom Gazette

Covering the Eastern Realm of the SCA

Arts & Sciences Research Paper #7: Life Before Toilet Paper

Our seventh A&S Research Paper comes to us from Baroness Charitye Dale, of the Barony of Settmour Swamp. She examines a question that would have affected our personas practically every single day – how did people manage before toilet paper? (Prospective future contributors, please check out our original Call for Papers .)

Life Before Toilet Paper

• One should not defecate outside of the cesspool.
• While standing outside, one should clear his throat.
• Anyone sitting inside should also clear his throat.
• Having put aside the (upper) robe on a bamboo pole or a cord, one should enter the place properly and unhurriedly.
• One should not pull up one’s lower robe before entering.
• One should pull up one’s lower robe while standing on the toilet shoes.
• If the place is splattered it should be washed.
• One should not groan or grunt while defecating.
• One should not wipe oneself with a rough stick.
• One should not drop the wiping stick into the cesspool.
• If the basket for wiping sticks is full, the wiping sticks should be thrown away.
• One should then cover oneself (with one’s lower robe) while standing on the toilet shoes.
• One should not leave hurriedly.
• One should not leave with one’s lower robe pulled up.
• One should pull it up while standing on the rinsing-room shoes.
• One shouldn’t make a smacking sound while rinsing.
• One should not leave any water remaining in the rinse vessel. [4]

Further evidence to the Buddhist doctrine of cleansing after defecation is found in an anecdote within their guidelines for monks which tells a story of the consequences of not rinsing oneself after defecating: “Now at that time a certain bhikkhu , a brahman by birth, didn’t want to rinse himself after defecating, (thinking,) ‘Who would touch this vile, stinking stuff?’ A worm took up residence in his anus. So he told this matter to the bhikkhus . ‘You mean you don’t rinse yourself after defecating?’ (they asked). ‘That’s right, my friends.’ Those bhikkhus who were of few wants … criticized and complained and spread it about, ‘How can a bhikkhu not rinse himself after defecating?’  They reported this matter to the Blessed One…” [5] The monks utilized what they referred to as a wiping stick to scrape feces after defecating.  The stick was smooth and slightly rounded, and was used to remove large pieces of feces before the monks rinsed themselves with water. Back to Top Islamic Precepts for Worshippers Buddhism is not the only religion that has strict rules about personal hygiene.  Worshippers of Islam had similarly stringent requirements for cleanliness.  The Qur’an is adamant about personal hygiene, which is why it is not surprising that Muslims also had very specific rules when it came to cleansing after defecation.  Abu Hureyrah, companion to the prophet Muhammad, narrated many edicts to the followers of Islam; cleansing after defecation included, between 590 and Muhammad’s death in 632 C.E.  “When any one of you goes to the Gha’it (toilet to defecate), let him take with him three stones and clean himself with them, for that will suffice him.” [6] He also stated, “I never saw the Messenger of Allah come out of the toilet without first (cleansing himself) with water.” [7] Rules, based on the narrations of Abu Hureyah, are outlined in Qadaa’ Al Haajah .  A redacted set of these rules is itemized below.

• When entering the toilet, one should say the A’udhu ( isti’adha ) and Basmala and then recite a prayer.
• When entering the toilet, one should not have in one’s hand anything on which the name of Allahu ta’ala or any verse of the Qur’an al-karim is written.
• One should enter the toilet with one’s left foot and exit with one’s right foot.
• One should recite the prayer “ Alhamdu-lil-laa-hil-la-dhi adh-haba ‘a-nil a-dhaa wa ‘a-faa-ni ” when exiting the toilet.
• After cleaning one’s private parts, one should cover them immediately.
• One should neither face the Qibla nor turn one’s back toward it while urinating or defecating.
• One should remove the feces on one’s anus with one’s finger and wash one’s hand. If there are still traces of filth, one should wash them with water.
• One should dry one’s private parts with a cloth after washing them.
• One should not look at one’s private parts or spit into the toilet.
• One must not urinate into any water, on a wall of a mosque, in a cemetery, or on a road.
• Cleaning the private parts with stones and similar materials is an acceptable substitute for cleaning them with water. [8]

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Strategies for Managing the Impacts of Disruptions During COVID-19: an Example of Toilet Paper

Sanjoy kumar paul.

1 UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Priyabrata Chowdhury

2 School of Accounting, Information Systems and Supply Chain, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

Due to the recent pandemic of coronavirus, known as the COVID-19 outbreak, the supply chains have been impacted most significantly. Manufacturers of certain items have experienced a substantial increase in demand, and on the other hand, raw materials supply, to produce those items, has reduced because of supply failure. To overcome these challenges, this paper proposes some strategies to improve service level during an extraordinary pandemic outbreak, such as COVID-19, for the most wanted products such as toilet paper. This study considers meeting the increased demand of the customers for an essential product of daily life like toilet paper during a pandemic is beyond the traditional economic objective, i.e., increase profit, of the manufacturers. Instead, this should be more about the social responsibility of all the manufactures to ensure that they can serve more customers. Motivated by this and taking toilet paper as an example of the product, we first analyzed the current scenario of the manufacturing and the demand for the product and then proposed some strategies to deal with this unprecedented risk and analyzed the results. We have compared the results, using hypothetical data, between the current scenario and proposed strategies. The result shows that sharing information and resources from all manufacturers to produce under a single brand, emergency sourcing, producing basic quality items, and packing in the smallest sizes have a significant positive impact on the service level. This paper first investigates the strategies for a high-demand and essential item during a pandemic situation and proposes strategies to deal with this unique, extraordinary disruption.

Introduction

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, which was first reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, has affected 215 countries and territories with more than 9.5 million cases and more than 485 thousand deaths as of 25 June 2020 (Worldometers 2020 ). This outbreak has already affected almost all sectors and most of the countries across the globe (Dryhurst et al. 2020 ); therefore, the World Health Organization (WHO) has marked it as a pandemic on 11 March 2020. A pandemic is a unique case of supply chain disruptions that do have not only severe but also long-lasting impacts on the operations of a supply chain. Any epidemic outbreaks, which can be contained geographically, are generally perceived as disruptions that have high uncertainty (Paul et al. 2013 ; Paul et al. 2014a , b , c ), long-term existence, and ripple effect (Ivanov 2020a ). In recent years, firms have been experiencing more numbers of epidemic outbreaks. For example, the WHO reported 1438 epidemics between 2011 and 2018 with huge impacts such as loss of life and economic slowdown (Hudecheck et al. 2020 ). In the case of a pandemic, companies in various sectors experience different types of challenges. For example, while many companies in different sectors, such as fashions and athletics, are shutting down their operations worldwide, as predicted in Haren and Simchi-Levi ( 2020 ), demand for certain products spikes suddenly. Toilet paper is such of type of product, the demand of which has suddenly increased, and companies across the globe are struggling to meet the demand. As a result, companies are unable to cope up with this panic buying even after limiting the number of buying allowed per customer. In many countries, the toilet paper of all supplying companies is stock-out, and there is no other substitute product available in the market; hence, general customers become panic, as the product is essential for daily life. Hence, it is crucial to develop strategies for managing the demand of an essential item like toilet paper during a pandemic. However, the studies on strategies and their impact on the service level for a high-demand and essential item during a pandemic are nonexistent in the literature. Considering the lack of studies in the literature, this study establishes following research questions.

• What are the strategies that can be used to manage the increased demand for an essential item during a pandemic like COVID-19?
• How can managers evaluate the improvement in service level after implementing the strategies?

Traditional supply chain disruption preparedness, mitigating, and recovery strategies cannot be used for planning recovery from this situation as many of these strategies are simply not sufficient for this particular case of disruptions (Paul et al. 2017 ; Darom et al. 2018 ; Dryhurst et al. 2020 ; Ivanov 2020a ). Instead, an adaptive strategy, which includes restructuring the supply chain, facing a supply chain disruption, and its impact are required (Paul et al. 2014a ; Zhao et al. 2019 ; Islam et al. 2020 ). A recent study (Kahiluoto et al. 2020 ) has shown that a response diversity to disruptions is more effective than mere diversity, such as diversity to individual suppliers. Furthermore, Koonin ( 2020 ) suggests to update and modify the supply chain response strategies for a particular product when a significant disruption like COVID-19 occurs to ensure that firms can minimize the variation between demand and supply. In the current situation of COVID-19, we argue that with a response diversity, the demand spikes of toilet paper could be managed in a better way. Managing the demand of such an essential product of daily life is vital; otherwise, the regular activities of the mass people might be impacted. As such, addressing the pressing demand of individuals and communities through developing strategies and using unique assets and capabilities, for an essential product, is a social responsibility of the companies (Hills 2020 ). An adequate attempt to meet this increased demand can also improve other social responsibility practices such as the creation of more jobs for producing and distributing the products (Govindan et al. 2014 ; Chowdhury and Paul 2020 ).

Based on the limitations of the applicability of previous studies on strategies for managing impacts of COVID-19, for a high-demand and essential item, this study considers the following research objectives.

• To identify appropriate strategies for a high-demand and essential item during a pandemic, like COVID-19.
• To develop an analytical model for the service level to show the benefits of strategies for managing the impacts of COVID-19.

Therefore, this study contributes to the literature by developing an analytical model with several strategies that can improve the service level of manufacturers of essential items, thereby improving their social responsibility practices in such an extreme situation of supply shortage. The proposed strategies can be applied whenever there is a nation-wide shortage of the supply of essential products such as toilet papers.

In developing the analytical model to solve this nation-wide supply shortage problem of toilet papers, we first focus on the current practices adopted by the firms to face this crisis. Then, we proposed, with appropriate justifications, several strategies that could be used in line with the current practices to solve the problem. Finally, using hypothetical data, we compare the service level in both the current situation and proposed strategies to justify the value of the proposed approaches. Finally, the implications of the study are discussed with a concluding remark.

Literature Review

In this section, we conduct a literature review on various types of supply chain risks and strategies for disruption risks. Based on the findings of the current literature, we identify the knowledge gaps to highlight the contributions of this study.

Supply Chain Risk

Risks in the context of the commercial supply chain are generally classified into two groups—operational risk and disruption risk. The former one denotes the risk events that can be predicted and are more controllable such as quality and quantity problem and longer lead time (Chowdhury et al. 2019 ; Saha et al. 2020 ). On the other hand, disruption risks refer to catastrophic events that are less controllable such as fire, machine breakdown, and natural disasters (Paul et al. 2016 ; Ray and Jenamani 2016 ; Lücker et al. 2019 ; Fartaj et al. 2020 ). Previous studies have indicated that different strategies are required to respond to these two categories of risks. For example, appropriate mitigation strategies to minimize the probability of occurring the incidents are suggested for operational risks (Chen et al. 2013 ; Paul et al. 2015b ; Chowdhury et al. 2016 ). However, for disruption risks appropriate recovery plan and strategies to minimize the impacts of the risks and to back to the normal operations are considered more suitable (Paul et al. 2015a ; Ivanov et al. 2017 ; Ivanov 2019 ; Paul et al. 2019a ). This is only recently when scholars are suggesting to explore the third category of risks termed as extraordinary risks, which refer to epidemic or pandemic outbreaks, for commercial products.

While some features of such extraordinary risks are prevalent in disruption risks such as they both are unpredicted and uncontrollable, the third risk category is unique for its features (Cappelli and Cini 2020 ; Choi 2020 ; Ivanov and Dolgui 2020 ). For example, extraordinary outbreaks are characterized by a long-term existence of the risk impacts, high uncertainty of the future impacts, and the ripple effect of the event on other functions or processes (disruption propagation) (Ivanov 2020a ). Moreover, while these extraordinary risk events have simultaneous impacts on sourcing, production, and demand management, the impacts are different for various types of products, such as high-demand and essential items, regular items, and fashion products (Paul and Chowdhury 2020 ). Due to its unique characteristics, an adaptive set of strategies is required to overcome such extraordinary risks for each type of product. However, current literature on epidemic or pandemic outbreaks in the contexts of commercial products is minimal and is unable to provide such adaptive strategies.

Strategies for Supply Chain Disruption

Strategies for managing supply chain disruptions in an extraordinary epidemic or pandemic outbreak are mostly investigated in the context of humanitarian supply chains (Dasaklis et al. 2012 ; Paul and Chowdhury 2020 ). Several strategies such as flexible orientation (Altay et al. 2018 ), on-time and speedy information sharing (Altay and Pal 2014 ; Scholten et al. 2014 ), implementation of the triple-A supply chain components—agility, adaptability, and alignment (Oloruntoba and Gray 2006 ; Dubey and Gunasekaran 2016 ), adaptive recovery plan, and employee support (Scholten et al. 2014 ) are found useful for recovering from epidemic outbreaks or severe disruptions in humanitarian supply chains. The role of leadership is also explored and confirmed in humanitarian supply chains as an appropriate leadership style assists quick recovery via improving cooperation with different stakeholders (Salem et al. 2019 ). However, humanitarian supply chains are significantly different from commercial and business supply chains (Oloruntoba and Gray 2006 ; Yadav and Barve 2016 ). As a result, the findings of humanitarian supply chains are not readily applicable to manage commercial supply chains.

Although not focused on extraordinary outbreaks, studies focusing on disruption risk have recommended various recovery strategies for commercial supply chains. Among them, relational strategies such as supply chain collaboration and information sharing are commonly suggested in previous studies (Chen et al. 2019 ; DuHadway et al. 2019 ). Both horizontal and vertical alliances contribute to quick recovery from a disruption risk (Chen et al. 2019 ). In this regard, collaborative planning with other supply chain partners is essential (Kumar and Anbanandam 2020 ). Studies also suggested supply chain information sharing and connectivity for disruption recovery (Dubey et al. 2018 ; Chang et al. 2019 ; Chen et al. 2019 ). These relational strategies help recover from disruptions by enhancing the triple-A supply chain performance. Moreover, the triple-A components are interconnected (Aslam et al. 2018 ; Wamba et al. 2020 ); hence, one component contributes to disruption recovery by influencing others. To improve relational infrastructure, the role of technology, internal and external process connectivity, and big data are also highlighted (Roscoe et al. 2020 ). A recent study investigated the production recovery plan for a high-demand item by considering the impacts of COVID-19 also finds that collaboration can help in quick recovery (Paul and Chowdhury 2020 ).

Another common disruption recovery strategy is flexibility in supply chains (Singh and Acharya 2013 ; Pérez-Pérez et al. 2019 ). Studies reveal that an adaptive supply chain recovery strategy is required for each supply chain disruption risk. Therefore, adjusting tactics and operations for recovering from disruptions is essential (Paul et al. 2014b ; Gligor et al. 2019 ; Paul et al. 2019b ; Kumar and Anbanandam 2020 ). Moreover, a flexible supply chain network structure is found appropriate for formulating appropriate disruption risk recovery strategies (Dubey et al. 2015 ; Gunasekaran et al. 2016 ; Ivanov and Sokolov 2019 ). Indeed, such ability to redesign the supply chain network by considering medium-to-long-term impacts of a disruption risk is known as viability and is suggested as an effective recovery strategy for the current COVID-19 (Ivanov 2020b ).

In addition to relational and flexible strategies, some other strategies also can be found in the literature. For example, buffer strategies such as backup and alternative suppliers (Al Masud et al. 2014 ; Paul et al. 2018 ; Chen et al. 2019 ), buffer inventory or material (Darom et al. 2018 ; Paul and Rahman 2018 ), capacity increase or utilizing reserved capacity (Paul et al. 2014a ; Ivanov et al. 2016 ), and imposing compensation policy for keeping customers waiting (Shao and Dong 2012 ) are suggested for disruption recovery. Paul and Chowdhury ( 2020 ) recommend increasing production capacity via utilizing more shifts, hiring more staff and buying more machinery, and emergency sourcing for high-demand items to recover from the impacts of an extraordinary outbreak such as COVID-19.

Knowledge Gaps

As outlined in the previous section, the current body of literature on supply chain disruption strategies for commercial products by considering extraordinary risks such as epidemic or pandemic outbreaks is scarce. Therefore, it is crucial to develop a set of strategies by considering such extraordinary outbreaks for various types of products, especially for high-demand and essential items, as the smooth flow of these products is required for mass people to maintain their regular activities. Moreover, Paul and Chowdhury ( 2020 ) suggested that the same strategies might not be useful for all high-demand items. Hence, strategies need to be carefully selected by considering product characteristics and severity and duration of the impacts of an outbreak. This is where the main contribution of this study lies: the formulation and investigation of strategies for one of the high-demand and essential items—toilet paper—during a pandemic outbreak. The study considered the product features in designing the strategies, which is not considered much in previous research. Besides, the majority of the supply chain disruption strategies are suggested for the post-disruption period. This study explores and analyzes the strategies that can be used during a pandemic situation to improve the service level of an essential product.

Problem Description and Formulation

During a pandemic, like COVID-19, it is common that there is a substantial level of panic buying, which increases the demand of certain items such as toilet papers, kitchen towels, and canned food (El-Terk 2020 ). On the other hand, manufacturers of those products face a significant decrease in their raw material supply, which creates this supply-demand problem in high tension. The ultimate result is that many customers, especially elders, will be in the empty hand of such essential items. In this critical situation, it is a social responsibility of manufacturers to ensure a higher level of production and distribution of these high-demand and essential items to serve more customers. To overcome this economic and operational challenge, this paper proposes some strategies to recover from these awkward situations and to improve the customer service level.

Firstly, we consider several local manufactures to produce the same item, such as toilet paper. In an ideal situation (no risk), they make their decision individually and serve the market. Then, we analyze the current practices during a pandemic situation. Currently, we observe that manufacturers still produce individually, but they use emergency sourcing, extra shifts, and purchase limit per customer to cover the higher demand. In the last, we have proposed some strategies and analyze results to recover from this pandemic situation.

In the ideal plan, there is no risk or disruption in the system. The demand, supply, and production capacities of a manufacturer are known. In this ideal situation, manufacturers make the products and deliver to the market based on their individual demand, supply, and capacity data. To determine the service of the ideal plan, we consider the following notations.

M is the total number of manufacturers ( m  = 1 to M )

P is the total possible packet sizes ( p  = 1 to P )

Q is the total number of possible quality options ( q  = 1 to Q )

d qpm is the demand of the product for manufacturer m for packet size p and quality option q .

Available raw materials are r % of the ideal demand. In the case of an ideal plan, we assume that r is equal to 100.

In the ideal plan, total quantity produced by all manufactures is determined as follows. Total quantity produced = ∑ q = 1 Q ∑ p = 1 P ∑ m = 1 M d qpm × r 100

We determine the service level, as shown in Eq. ( 1 ).

Current Practices

Currently, there are shortages of raw materials of toilet papers. As the first step, companies have used the buffer materials kept for disruption management (Hudecheck et al. 2020 ). Currently, all companies individually employ their backup and alternative suppliers to increase sourcing quantity (Linton and Vakil 2020 ). Previous outbreaks, such as March 2011 Tsunami in Fukushima, Japan and 2014 Ebola in West Africa, educated the companies to keep alternative and multiple suppliers in various regions to be able to source from other regions when the affected region cannot provide required materials (Aldrighetti et al. 2019 ; Linton and Vakil 2020 ). This spreading of suppliers includes the suppliers in different tiers. Companies that had already mapped their supply base in early 2020 after the outbreak already knew that even if they do not source the materials from the most affected areas of COVID-19, maybe their suppliers do. Hence, firms have been utilizing the lessons of supply chain mapping in making potential strategies to increase the volume of sourced materials. Moreover, companies are maintaining regular communication with their suppliers to understand their contingency plan to deliver additional materials.

Companies have also increased the number of shifts to ensure that they are optimally utilizing their production capabilities to fulfill the shortage. For example, Kimberly-Clark, the largest Australian toilet paper manufacturer, has moved to 24 h of production to increase the supply of toilet paper (Bagshaw and Powell 2020 ). In the process of running more shifts, many manufacturers have recruited more staff to ensure that they can run the production facility 24 h a day. Currently, manufacturers make the decision themselves, and they produce different varieties of quality products such as single-, two-, and three-ply. Moreover, at present, packet sizes are different such as 4 rolls, 12 rolls, 24 rolls, and 48 rolls. Finally, there is a purchase limit, such as one customer can buy only one pack of toilet paper per customer in the retail store, for example.

We assume that demand increases could be certain times of the current demand, such as 2 times and 3 times. There is a shortage of raw materials. Emergency sourcing is possible up to a certain level, such as 0–100% of the ideal demand. The objective is to serve more customers and improve the service level.

The increased demand ( D qpm ) of the item of quality q and packet size p from manufacturer m is calculated as follows.

Here, N 1 is the times of demand increased and greater than 1.

If one customer buys one pack, the total number of customers to be served is determined as follows.

Availability of raw material =  r % of the ideal demand

Emergency sourcing =  s % of the ideal demand

For the current practice, we determine the service level, as presented in Eq. ( 4 ).

Proposed Strategies

During a pandemic situation and for a high-demand and essential item like toilet paper, we propose the following strategies to increase the production quantity and to serve more customers, hence the service level. The main objective is to serve more customers and improve the service level.

The target number of customers to be served is calculated using Eq. ( 5 ).

Here, N 2 is the times of demand increased due to basic quality and smaller packs and greater than 1.

The study has considered and analyzed four main strategies to improve the service level. These strategies are discussed below:

Resource sharing among all manufacturers.

This strategy is a part of flexible supply chains (Singh et al. 2019 ), in which all manufacturers in a country should collaborate, share resources, and produce a single brand of the item. While companies typically do not share their resources and information with the competitors to ensure a competitive edge and more market share and profit, they are required to do that during a pandemic for a high-demand and essential item, such as toilet paper, considering that meeting the increased demand of individuals and communities is a social responsibility of all the manufactures. Because of resource sharing, a manufacturer can supplement the inadequate raw materials of other manufacturers, which will increase the availability of raw materials to produce more products. Let us assume that three different raw materials are needed to produce a product. A manufacturer may have two of them, while another manufacturer may have other types of raw material. By sharing resources, both companies can produce a certain amount of more products. We argue that coordinating activities and response plans and sharing resources with competitors can be an effective strategy. Recently, in Australia, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has granted authorization to Banks, grocery retailers, and medical equipment suppliers to allow them to coordinate with the competitors (Claytonutz 2020 ). This strategy aligns with Koonin ( 2020 ), who reports that alliances with other businesses could potentially be used as a recovery plan from COVID-19.

Use of collective emergency sourcing.

In the second strategy, manufacturers in a country will collectively, rather than individually what companies are now doing, explore the options to increase the quantity of sourced materials. They together may go for sourcing from a new location from where it is not feasible for the individual manufacturer to source materials. They all also can utilize the backup and alternative suppliers of each other to increase collective emergency sourcing. This strategy is possible when all manufacturers collaborate, share their information, and work together to source materials, which are the segments of the flexible supply chains (Wadhwa et al. 2009 ). This horizontal sourcing approach is also discussed in Orsdemir et al. ( 2019 ).

Produce basic quality items.

In the third strategy, we propose the manufacturers to offer basic quality items, rather than providing premium quality items, during a pandemic situation to increase the volume of production. For example, in the case of toilet paper, manufacturers will produce one-ply toilet rolls instead of two- or three-ply. This can potentially enable companies to serve more customers.

Pack the product with a minimum standard size.

It this strategy, manufacturers will pack the items with a minimum standard size to increase the total number of packets and serve more customers. For example, in the case of toilet paper, manufacturers will produce a pack with four rolls instead of 12, 24, or 48 rolls.

Using the proposed above four strategies, the total quantity produced is calculated as follows.

We determine the service level, as presented in Eq. ( 6 ).

Analyzing Results

We use hypothetical data to explain the results for a high-demand and essential item during a pandemic. In this example, we consider toilet paper as an item. We analyze the results for an ideal situation, current practices during a pandemic, and proposed strategies for managing the impacts.

Results of Ideal Plan

In the ideal plan, we assume that there are three manufactures with the demand data, as presented in Table  1 .

Table 1

Demand data in the ideal plan

As we assume that there is no shortage of raw materials, we calculated the service level by using Eq. ( 1 ), which is 100%.

Results of Current Practices

During the pandemic, we use the following additional data.

N 1  = 3; r  = 50%; s  = 30%

Customers can buy one pack of the item at a time.

Using Eq. ( 4 ), we calculate the service level is only 27%. Service level falls significantly because of a shortage of raw materials, limited emergency sourcing, and significant demand increment. In the current practice, total customers can be served only 4904 out of expected customers 18,390.

Results of Proposed Strategies

To overcome the shortage of supply and surge of demand during a pandemic, we use four strategies, as described in Sect.  3.3 . We consider the following data.

A basic quality toilet paper has 1 ply. If we produce 1 ply toilet roll instead of 3 ply, the quality factor would be 3. If we produce 1 ply toilet roll instead of 2 ply, the quality factor would be 2.

Smallest pack size has 4 rolls per pack. If we produce 4 rolls in a packet instead of 12 rolls, packet size factor would be 3. If we produce 4 rolls in a packet instead of 48 rolls, packet size factor would be 12.

r  = 60%, we assume a 10% increase in raw material availability because of collaboration and resource sharing.

s  = 35%, we assume a 5% increase in emergency sourcing because of information sharing and sourcing collectively.

Target customer to be served is calculated using Eq. ( 5 ), which is 91,950. Service level is improved to 86% [using the Eq. ( 6 )]. This means total 78,897 customers can be served by implementing the prospered four strategies.

Impact of Resource Sharing Among all Manufacturers

We analyze the impact of resource sharing among all manufacturers on the service level, which is presented in Fig.  1 . Resource sharing among all manufactures increases the available raw materials, and we have observed that the service level is increased with increasing the available raw materials.

Impact of resource sharing among all manufacturers on the service level

Impact of the Use of Collective Emergency Sourcing

Collective emergency sourcing helps to increase the raw materials from emergency sources, which has a positive impact on the service level. Figure  2 shows that the service level improves with increasing the amount of emergency sourcing.

Impact of collective emergency sourcing on the service level

Practical Implications

The government, World Health Organization, and health care agencies are working hard to stop or reduce the spread of COVID-19; however, many manufacturing industries are struggling to absorb and manage the growing impact of this epidemic (Linton and Vakil 2020 ). This study shows, through an example of toilet papers, how manufacturers of high-demand items can increase the service level during a pandemic. While the study proposes and analyzed four strategies, manufactures may consider implementing all or one or multiple of the strategies to improve the service level. However, different strategies will have a different impact on improvement. When companies collaborate and share resources with competitors to increase the availability of raw materials, the production quantities and, ultimately, the service level are increased.

However, it would not be realistic to consider a significant increase in the availability of raw material as shortages may come from suppliers, and manufacturers may not have sufficient resources to share. As a result, companies can be better benefitted via implementing the second strategy, collective emergency sourcing, together with the first strategy. In such a situation, manufacturers not only get access to the resources of other manufacturers but also increase the amount of emergency sourcing. Hence, the production quantity will increase, which will help improve the service level. All manufacturers should share their information quickly to utilize all available emergency sources. However, in general, emergency sourcing is costly compared to standard sourcing. However, in the case of a pandemic, manufacturers should consider emergency sourcing to improve service level, hence serving more customers.

The study also suggests the manufactures of toilet papers producing basic quality items and the standard minimum packet size during a pandemic to improve the service level substantially. These strategies assist in improving the probability that the necessary items are more uniformly distributed, and more customers are served. Finally, the findings of the study suggest that the government and policymakers of a country should support the manufacturers to overcome this nation-wide shortage of supply. For example, to implement the first two strategies, manufacturers need authorization from the policymakers (Claytonutz 2020 ). While this study solves a current and real-world problem and has more managerial implications, the findings have also contributed to the literature by developing an analytical model to improve high-demand and essential items during a pandemic.

During an extraordinary crisis, like COVID-19, strategies under flexible manufacturing and supply chains play a significant role in recovering the impact (Altay et al. 2018 ; Hosseini et al. 2019 ; Qamar et al. 2019 ). For example, a positive and flexible mindset is vital for implementing the ‘ resource sharing among all manufacturers’ and ‘use of collective emergency sourcing’ strategies. Under normal circumstances, generally, manufacturers do not collaborate with their competitors for resource sharing and collective emergency sourcing. However, considering the significant impact of the COVID-19 and limited application and usefulness of the traditional disruption management strategies (Ivanov 2020a ), we suggest manufacturers be flexible in formulating policies at both strategic and operational levels.

The other two strategies, ‘ produce basic quality items ’ and ‘ pack the product with a minimum standard size ,’ are parts of flexible manufacturing. Generally, manufacturers are reluctant to produce only basic quality items and pack them with a minimum standard size, as these may affect their reputation and competitive advantage. However, during a severe crisis moment, like COVID-19, it is recommended that manufacturers produce essential items through close collaboration with each other to serve more customers by maintaining basic quality and minimum standard pack size. Such flexible strategies, on the one hand, improve service level and, on the other hand, protect the reputation or competitive advantages of a particular manufacturer.

Conclusions

It is a social responsibility of manufactures to produce and distribute highly demand items such as toilet paper during a crisis time such as COVID-19. In this research, we have suggested several strategies to recover during a pandemic situation for this high-demand and essential item. Overall, as shown in this study, it is suggested that the manufacturers work together to share resources and source jointly in the emergency and focus more on basic quality and size, rather than focusing on premium quality, to serve more customers. The results show that the proposed strategies help to improve the service level of the high-demand and essential items during a pandemic outbreak, such as COVID-19.

While the study has substantial implications for economic and operational practices, the study also has several limitations. First, the analytical model is only applicable to a high-demand and essential item to improve the service level. Second, one or more of the strategies may not be applicable to other high-demand and essential items. For example, by producing lower ply items, it is possible to produce more quantity, which may not be applicable to other products such as hand sanitizer. Third, this study used hypothetical data to analyze the model. In the future, this study can be extended to develop a decision-making and optimization model considering both demand and supply disruptions in a pandemic situation. This study can be further extended to developing decision-making models in global and complex supply chain systems. In addition, comprehensive empirical research using in-depth case studies or a large-scale survey could be undertaken to develop a theory regarding supply chain recovery plans and strategies for high-demand and essential items during an extraordinary outbreak such as COVID-19 (Pal and Altay 2019 ).

Key Questions

Biographies, dr sanjoy paul.

is currently working as a Senior Lecturer in operations and supply chain management at the University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia. He has published more than 70 articles in top-tier journals and conferences including European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Production Economics, Computers and Operations Research, International Journal of Production Research, International Journal of Physical Distributions and Logistics Management, Annals of Operations Research, Journal of Management in Engineering, Journal of Cleaner Production, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, and Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing. Dr Paul has received several awards in his career, including ASOR Rising Star Award (a national level award to recognize early career researchers in operations research), Excellence in Early Career Research Award from the UTS Business School, the Stephen Fester prize for most outstanding thesis, and high impact publications award for publishing articles in top-tier journals from the University of New South Wales (UNSW).

Dr Priyabrata Chowdhury

is a Lecturer in Supply Chain Management at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Dr Chowdhury obtained his PhD in Supply Chain Management and MBA in Marketing Studies and International Marketing. His research area includes supply chain risk and disruption management, supply chain resilience, supply chain sustainability, and strategic alliances in a supply chain. His research articles have appeared in the top-tier journals including International Journal of Operations and Production Management, International Journal of Physical Distributions and Logistics Management, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Benchmarking: An International Journal.

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Contributor Information

Sanjoy Kumar Paul, Email: [email protected] .

Priyabrata Chowdhury, Email: [email protected] .

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Title: leave no context behind: efficient infinite context transformers with infini-attention.

Abstract: This work introduces an efficient method to scale Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) to infinitely long inputs with bounded memory and computation. A key component in our proposed approach is a new attention technique dubbed Infini-attention. The Infini-attention incorporates a compressive memory into the vanilla attention mechanism and builds in both masked local attention and long-term linear attention mechanisms in a single Transformer block. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on long-context language modeling benchmarks, 1M sequence length passkey context block retrieval and 500K length book summarization tasks with 1B and 8B LLMs. Our approach introduces minimal bounded memory parameters and enables fast streaming inference for LLMs.

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5 tips to enhance your research paper’s visibility and altmetric score.

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I previously wrote about the importance of attracting public attention to scientific research . In today’s world, where billions of people are attached to their digital devices watching the very addictive but often useless TikTok content or receiving instant gratification by engaging in meaningless debates about celebrities, scientists need to find creative ways to have their research noticed. Popularizing scientific research helps inspire the younger generations to go into science and provide the general public with a sense of optimism enabling the government to channel more resources into science. People do need inspiration. But very often, even very important scientific breakthroughs requiring many years, hard work, skill, funding, and genuine serendipity go largely unnoticed by the general public.

One of the best ways to measure expert and public attention is the cumulative Altmetric Attention Score , originally developed by Digital Science and adopted by many prestigious publishers, including Nature Publishing Group. Every Nature paper and the papers published by pretty much every credible publisher are tracked by Digital Science by the Document Object Identification (DOI) or the Unique Resource Locator (URL) . While Altmetric has many limitations, for example, it does not track LinkedIn posts and may not adequately cover the impact of top-tier media coverage, at the moment it is the blueprint for tracking attention.

Altmetric Score in The Age of Generative AI

Media attention is likely to be very important in the age of generative AI. Many modern generative systems, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Mistral, and Gemini, as well as hundreds of Large Language Models (LLMs) in China, use the data from the same sources referenced in Altmetric to learn. The more times generative systems see the same concept presented in different contexts, the better they learn. So if you want to contribute to the training of AI systems that may thank you for it in the future - Altmetric is the way to go.

So what can a research group do to ensure they are communicating their findings effectively and increasing the visibility of their research to ensure it gets reflected in the Altmetric Attention Score?

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Altmetric openly discloses the weights of the various sources and the scoring algorithm is relatively straightforward. It is easy to learn, and there are multiple online resources providing advice on how to share your research in ways that will be captured by Altmetric. Cambridge University Press published a guideline to Altmetric for the authors on how to popularize their research with Altmetric in mind. Wolters Kluwer put out a guide and the editor of Toxicology and Pathology wrote a comprehensive overview of Altmetric and how to use it. Surprisingly, this overview got an Altmetric Attention Score of only 4 at the time of the writing, but was cited 137 times according to Google Scholar .

Altmetric monitors social networks, including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Reddit; all major top-tier mainstream media, mainstream science blogs, policy documents, patents, Wikipedia articles, peer review websites, F1000, Syllabi, X (formerly Twitter), tracked Facebook pages, Reddit, one of the Stack Exchange sites, and Youtube. Unfortunately, several powerful platforms, including LinkedIn, are not currently tracked.

The popularity of the paper depends on many factors. Firstly, it has to be novel, trendy, and newsworthy. You are unlikely to get high Altmetric Score with a boring topic. Secondly, papers coming out of popular labs in top-tier academic institutions and in top journals are likely to attract more attention. Often, the communications officers in these academic institutions work closely with the media to amplify notable research. Celebrity companies, for example, Google DeepMind, consistently get higher coverage.

Screenshot of the Altmetric Attention Score "Flower" showing several tracked sources

Here are the five tips for increasing the visibility of your work and ensuring that reach is tracked and reflected by Altmetric:

1. Understand How Altmetric System Works

Congratulations, if you read this article and looked at what sources are tracked by Altmetric. Most likely, you got the basics and will be able to get a “balanced flower” by making a press release, tweeting the DOI of the paper on X, posting a video overview of your paper on Youtube, announcing on Reddit (I still need to learn how to do this).

To understand how Altmetric works, I emailed a few questions to Miguel Garcia, Director of Product and Data Analytics Hub at Digital Science and my first question was wether the Altmetric algorithm is open source. “The Altmetric Attention Score's calculation is not open source but we try to provide as much information as possible around how we calculate it here, and are currently considering what steps we might take to make our algorithms more transparent.” He also provided a link to how the Altmetric Attention Score is calculated.

Many professionals use LinkedIn as the primary social media resource and I was wondering why Altmetric stopped tracking it. Bad news - technical reasons prevent tracking DOIs on LinkedIn. Good news - they are actively seeking ways to appropriately track mentions on LinkedIn and we may see some news toward the end of the year.

My other big question was how does Altmetric count tweets and retweets on X. What if there are many posts from the same account? Miguel’s response was: “Re-tweets count less than original tweets. In addition to that, modifiers are applied to the type of account that is tweeting in order to reduce the weight of the tweet in situations where we find signals of bias or promiscuity (for example a journal publisher only tweeting their own articles). Besides that, we have conditions around the maximum number of retweets in order to limit the maximum impact they would have.”

So tweeting the article many times will not help you. But if other scientists tweet you paper with a DOI - these tweets will get counted. So tweet others as you would like to be tweeted.

2. Make a Press Release and Distribute to Science-focused Media

If your paper is significant, for example, you elucidated novel disease biology, discovered a new drug, developed a new fancy algorithm, designed a new material, or developed a new application for a quantum computer, it is worthwhile investing some time and resources in writing a press release. If you are working for an academic institution, most likely they have a communications office that will help you. If you do not have this luxury, you will need to learn how to write a press release. Plenty of free online guides cover the basics of press release writing. And press releases are one area where ChatGPT and other generative tools do surprisingly well. Upload your paper and ask it to write a press release, check for errors or exaggerations, edit, and you are ready to go. Just make sure to include the DOI and the URL of your paper. A proper business press release on BusinessWire or PRNewswire may cost several thousand dollars. In my opinion, these resources are dramatically overcharging while providing little service. I don't remember a case where a journalist picked up our news based on a commercial press release. But these releases are often reposted by other online press release distributors and the boost to Altmetric may be considerable. The default news release distribution service for research news is EurekAlert. This resource may sometimes result in journalistic coverage as many reporters are using it for science news. There are many free resources you can use if you do not have any budget.

Once the press release is issued, share it with the media. Share the resulting news coverage via your social networks and contacts. Many journalists track the popularity of their news articles and giving them several thousand extra views from professional audience and increasing their social following increases the chances that they will cover the next important research paper.

3. Make a Blog Post

Writing a blog post can be longer and more comprehensive than the press release. Make sure to add fancy diagrams and graphical explainers. You can share the blog post with the journalists at the same time as the press release. Your blog may serve as a source of inspiration for third party news coverage. Make sure to reference the DOI and URL of your paper.

If your paper is in one of the Nature journals, consider writing a “Behind the Paper" blog post on Nature Bioengineering Community. Surprisingly, these blogs are rarely picked up by Altmetric but may serve as a source of inspiration for the journalists and social media influencers. Plus, it is a resource by the Nature Publishing Group.

4. Tweet and Ask Your Team Members to Tweet

Each post on X gives you a quarter of an Altmetric point. If your paper goes viral on X, your Altmetric score can be considerable. Plus, once journalists notice that it went viral, they will be more likely to cover the story, further increasing the score.

Try to choose the time of the post, the hashtags, and the images wisely. Since Elon Musk took over X and opened the algorithm it became very transparent and easy to optimize for. Here are the top 10 tips for boosting attention for a post on X. Make sure to include the DOI or the URL of the paper for Altmetric to find the post.

5. Experiment, Learn, Repeat

My highest Altmetric Attention Score core to date was around 1,500 for a paper in Nature Biotechnology published in 2019, where we used a novel method for designing small molecules called Generative Tensorial Reinforcement Learning (GENTRL) to generate new molecules with druglike properties that got synthesized and tested all the way into mice. In 2024, we went further and showed that an AI-generated molecule for an AI-discovered target was tested all the way up to Phase II human trials, but the paper published in Nature Biotechnology, let’s call it the TNIK paper , has achieved a score ofjust over 600 to date. So what has changed and what can we learn from these two papers?

The popularity of the paper depends on many factors. Ones which capture the public imagination or have widespread appeal are of course, much more likely to gain traction online. When we published the GENTRL paper in 2019, Generative AI was in its infancy, and there are pretty much no other companies that I heard of at the intersection of generative AI and drug discovery. We also published multiple articles in this field in the years leading to that paper and many key opinion leaders (KOLs) followed us. That following included a small army of generative AI skeptics who not only contributed to multiple rejections in peer-reviewed journals but also openly criticized this approach in social networks. This criticism also helped boost the Altmetric Score and bring more attention to the study. So first learning from this exercise - negative publicity helps overall publicity. As long as you are certain that your research results are honest - leave room for criticism and even help expose your paper’s weaknesses. Critics are your greatest Altmetric boosters. Since readers and, by extension journalists, react to negative news and drama stronger than to positive news, critical reviews will boost your Altmetric as long as the DOI or URL of the paper is properly referenced.

Secondly, papers coming out of popular labs in top-tier academic institutions and in top journals are likely to attract more attention. Often, the communications officers in these academic institutions work closely with the media to amplify notable research. Celebrity companies, for example, Google DeepMind, always get a higher level of coverage. For example, the AlphaFold paper published in July 2021 in Nature got an Altmetric Attention Score of over 3,500 . Even though I have not seen any drugs out of AlphaFold reaching preclinical candidate status, I predict the popularity of this tool will result in the first Nobel Prize in this area. Therefore, in order to become famous and popularize your research more effectively, it is a good idea to build up the public profile of yourself and your work. For example, Kardashians are famous for being famous .

Be careful with Wikipedia. I made a mistake explaining the importance of Wikipedia to students when lecturing on the future of generative AI, and one or two of them got banned for expanding the articles with paper references. Wikipedia requires that these are added by independent editors rather than the authors of papers themselves, but if some editors do not like it, they will not go deep or investigate - they will assume wrongdoing. So it is better to avoid even talking about Wikipedia. References there should happen naturally and often some of the more popular papers get picked up and referenced by veteran editors.

Experimenting with Altmetric will also help you explore new strategies for popularizing scientific research and develop new strategies for inspiring people to learn or even get into the new exciting field. UNESCO estimates that there was just over 8 million full-time equivalent (FTE) researchers in 2018 globally. Only a fraction of these are in biotechnology - less than 0.01% of the global population. If you motivate a million students to go into biotechnology by popularizing your research, you double this number.

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