Étiquette : Academic Social Networks

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Ten years of research on ResearchGate, a scoping review using Google Scholar 2008-2017

Authors : Prieto-Gutierrez, Juan Jose

Objective

To analyse quantitatively the articles published during 2008_2017 about the academic social networking site ResearchGate.

Methods

A scoping bibliometric review of documents retrieved using Google Scholar was conducted, limited to publications that contained the word « ResearchGate » in their title and were published from 2008 to 2017.

Results

The search yielded 159 documents, once a preliminary list of 386 documents retrieved from Google Scholar was filtered, which eliminated about 60% of the results that were bibliographic citations and not documents. Papers in journals were the most numerous type of documents (n73; 46%), followed by conference papers (n_31; 19.5 %).

Contributing eight publications, two Spanish scholars (Delgado Lopez-Cozar and Orduna Malea, who were coauthors in each case) were the most prolific authors writing on this topic during the ten-year period. The keywords most used in the documents were « ResearchGate » and « Altmetrics ».

The publications were cited frequently since 2014 (more than 90% of the total cites fell in that period), and those with more than one author were the most cited ones.

The authors of the documents were mainly librarians and information science professionals, who wrote primarily as co-authors with colleagues from their own institutions, mostly published in English.

Conclusions

Interest in ResearchGate has grown since 2015, as evident from the number of articles published and the citations they received.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.08752

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Open access availability of Catalonia research output: Case analysis of the CERCA institution, 2011-2015

Authors : Anna Rovira, Cristóbal Urbano, Ernest Abadal

The open access availability of publications by Catalonia’s CERCA research centres was analysed to determine the extent to which authors use open access journals, repositories, social networks and other websites to disseminate their research results.

A sample of 3,730 journal articles published by authors from CERCA research centres between 2011 and 2015 and available on Web of Science (out of a total output of 44,423) was analysed to identify how many were available in open access, full-text format.

The results revealed that 75,8% of the total (2,828 articles) had at least one version available in open access, but just 52% (1,940 articles) had at least one version available in either journals (whether pure or hybrid open access journals or those with embargo periods) or repositories, a finding that highlights the powerful role played by academic social networks in the sharp increase in open access availability.

Of the 2,828 articles for which at least one open access version was found, a total of 9,868 copies were located. With respect to versions, the publisher’s final version, i.e. the type formatted for publication by journal publishers, was found in 75,3% of cases.

The number of articles published in open access journals (567) was very close to the number of articles published in hybrid journals or journals with embargo periods (624).

Only 40,4% of the articles in the sample were located in repositories, being the subject repositories the heaviest used. Fifty percent of the articles (1,881 publications) were posted on academic social networks, the most popular of which were ResearchGate and Academia.

According to thematic areas, all six areas (science, life sciences, medical and health sciences, engineering and architecture and humanities) exceeded 70% of articles in open access.

URL : Open access availability of Catalonia research output: Case analysis of the CERCA institution, 2011-2015

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0216597

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Whose Research is it Anyway? Academic Social Networks Versus Institutional Repositories

Authors : Nicole C. Eva, Tara A. Wiebe

INTRODUCTION

Looking for ways to increase deposits into their institutional repository (IR), researchers at one institution started to mine academic social networks (ASNs) (namely, ResearchGate and Academia.edu) to discover which researchers might already be predisposed to providing open access to their work.

METHODS

Researchers compared the numbers of institutionally affiliated faculty members appearing in the ASNs to those appearing in their institutional repositories. They also looked at how these numbers compared to overall faculty numbers.

RESULTS

Faculty were much more likely to have deposited their work in an ASN than in the IR. However, the number of researchers who deposited in both the IR and at least one ASN exceeded that of those who deposited their research solely in an ASN.

Unexpected findings occurred as well, such as numerous false or unverified accounts claiming affiliation with the institution. ResearchGate was found to be the favored ASN at this particular institution.

DISCUSSION

The results of this study confirm earlier studies’ findings indicating that those researchers who are willing to make their research open access are more disposed to do so over multiple channels, showing that those who already self-archive elsewhere are prime targets for inclusion in the IR.

CONCLUSION

Rather than seeing ASNs as a threat to IRs, they may be seen as a potential site of identifying likely contributors to the IR.

URL : Whose Research is it Anyway? Academic Social Networks Versus Institutional Repositories

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2243

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Spanish academics and social networking sites: Use, non-use, and the perceived advantages and drawbacks of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, ResearchGate, and Academia.edu

Authors : Francisco Segado-Boj, Jesús Díaz-Campo, Erika Fernández-Gómez, María-Ángeles Chaparro-Domínguez

This study examines Spanish academics’ motives for using social networking sites (SNS) and their perceptions regarding the limitations of and drawbacks to social media.

We analyse 18 in-depth interviews conducted with Spanish university professors chosen according to their disciplines, academic ranks and level of use. Our findings confirm prior research based on the uses and gratifications theory.

Thus, we conclude that SNS are used for managing content, identifying experts in a researcher’s field of knowledge. In addition, academics need to manage different personal identities in each SNS they use.

URL : https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7296

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Altmetrics of the Open Access Institutional Repositories: A Webometrics Approach

Author : Isidro F. Aguillo

Self-archiving in Institutional Repositories (IRs) is playing a central role in the success of the Open Access initiatives. Deposited documents are more visible and probably they get more downloads and citations, but making them freely available in a local repository is not enough.

Social tools, both public and academic targeting, networking or silo oriented, should be taken into account for reaching larger audiences and increase not only the scholarly but also the social impact.

This communication explores the presence of IRs contents in 28 social tools (Academia, Bibsonomy, CiteUlike, CrossRef, Datadryad, Facebook, Figshare, Google+, GitHub, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, RenRen, ResearchGate, Scribd, SlideShare, Tumblr, Twitter, Vimeo, VKontakte, Weibo, Wikipedia All Languages, Wikipedia English, Wikia, Wikimedia, YouTube and Zenodo) using a webometric approach.

The link mentions of 2185 IRs in the cited tools were collected during July 2017 from Google selected data centers. The results showed that most of the IRs have no strong presence in the most specializes tools and even for the most popular services the figures are not high enough too.

Lack of strategies and bad practices are suggested as possible explanations for the low altmetrics figures.

URL : Altmetrics of the Open Access Institutional Repositories: A Webometrics Approach

Alternative location : https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/65298/STI2018_paper_37.pdf

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Clearing the garden: ScholarlyHub as a new non-profit digital commons

Authors : April Hathcock, Guy Geltner

Open scholarly communications are being suffocated by for-profit and large-scale academic publishers on the one hand and undermined by commercial academic social networks on the other.

A possible part of the solution to both is ScholarlyHub, a new initiative to create a non-profit digital commons. ScholarlyHub proposes to serve as a social ‘front end’ of the open access movement and offer an aggregating space for diverse initiatives in the world of scholarly communications, from mentoring and pre-print services and data storage, to peer review and publication.

This article explains the pressing need to ‘clear the garden’ in order to enable research to flourish in its natural environment and details the progress of ScholarlyHub to date, looking ahead with optimism to a more collaborative and open future.

URL : Clearing the garden: ScholarlyHub as a new non-profit digital commons

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.398

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Health 2.0: The Scholarly Communication Practices of Medical Sciences and Health Sciences Users on Academia.edu

Author : Lydia Thorne

Many academics are active users of social media and some even use these sites for professional networking. However, while scholars can use traditional social networking platforms to network with their peers, share research articles, and keep up to date in their fields, there are some limitations that emerge when these sites are used for academic purposes.

Academic social networking sites have emerged as one viable alternative, as they allow scholars to share their research and to network and collaborate with others while maintaining a professional online presence.

Although many studies have examined the information behaviour of those who use academic social networking sites, such as differences in discipline and academic status, no studies to date have explored these characteristics in the health and medical field.

This study seeks to address this gap by focusing on the scholarly communication practices of faculty members and graduate students in two disciplines – Medical Sciences and Health Sciences – on Academia.edu.

URL : https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/fimswp/7/