Étiquette : Academic Social Networks

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Who Wrote This? Creator Metadata Quality on Academia.Edu

Author : Zachary Schoenberger

Academic social networking services (SNSs) such as ResearchGate.com or Academia.Edu have recently experienced a surge in popularity (Ortega, 2016). Existing research into academic SNSs have focused on population parameters and social networking usage patterns. Currently, no research has been conducted on the quality of bibliographic metadata on academic SNSs.

Bibliographic metadata functions to support user tasks, including finding, identifying, selecting, and obtaining information resources. “Creator” metadata, which describes resource authorship, helps users find and identify digital works in a repository.

Additionally, academic researchers rely on author attribution for their professional promotion and prestige, and they are accustomed to scholarly environments which implement standards that support accurate author attribution.

This study therefore examines “creator” metadata for University of Alberta publications posted on Academia.Edu, and compares these with publisher created records of the same titles. Metadata quality is assessed through the measurement of completeness, consistency, and accuracy.

The study reveals that Academia.Edu “creator” metadata is significantly incomplete compared to publisher metadata, and the frequency of incomplete records increases in proportion to the size of the author cohort. This incompleteness is evidence of poor metadata quality on Academia.Edu.

Academia.Edu “creator” metadata is, however, much more consistent than publisher metadata. Finally, accuracy is found to be an inadequate determiner of metadata quality, as the presence of user generated metadata calls into question the conceptual stability of “authenticity” and “authority,” upon which a measure of accuracy depends.

This study of metadata quality therefore reveals the complexity and contradiction that underlies this topic. In terms of completeness, Academia.Edu metadata is poor in quality. In terms of consistency, Academia.Edu metadata excels in quality.

Finally, the study recommends further investigation into the definition of authority in relation to user-contributed metadata.

URL : https://era.library.ualberta.ca/files/csj139229z#

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Use of ResearchGate by the Research Scholars of Pondicherry University: A Study

Authors : Mangkhollen Singson, Mohammad Amees

ResearchGate is an academic social network site designed primarily for scholars to create their own profiles, upload their scholarly work, and communicate among peers. The present study explores the motives, activities and benefit researcher seek or gain from joining ResearchGate academic social network.

The result of the study indicates that ResearchGate is popular among research scholars in Pondicherry University. The motive of joining ResearchGate by scholar are many, however, majority of the scholars agrees that joining ResearchGate enable them to connect with people who have similar interests.

Similarly, majority of the scholars stated that the main activity they involve themselves besides many activities in ResearchGate is reading articles and reviewing paper posted by others.

Finally, ResearchGate has enhanced their ability to stay abreast with new/latest developments in their field of research. However, seeking employments using ResearchGate is the least research scholars anticipate.

URL : Use of ResearchGate by the Research Scholars of Pondicherry University: A Study

Alternative location : http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/11139

 

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Réseaux sociaux académiques et diffusion de la production scientifique des chercheurs en biologie/médecine L’exemple de ResearchGate

Auteurs/Authors : Christophe Boudry, Aline Bouchard

Les réseaux sociaux pour les chercheurs s’imposent au fil du temps auprès des communautés académiques, notamment grâce aux fonctionnalités de dépôt et de partage d’articles qu’ils proposent.

L’objet de cette étude est d’évaluer la proportion, la typologie (pre-print, version auteur non expertisée ; post-print auteur/éditeur, versions auteur et éditeur expertisées définitives) et la légalité des textes intégraux d’articles qui y sont déposés par les chercheurs, à partir d’un échantillon de 1 500 articles publiés entre 2013 et 2015 sélectionnés aléatoirement dans PubMed, en prenant pour exemple ResearchGate qui est très largement utilisé par la communauté médicale et biologique.

À titre de comparaison, l’accès au texte intégral des 1 500 articles via PubMed et PubMedCentral a également été évalué, mettant en évidence le rôle important que joue ResearchGate dans la fourniture de textes intégraux d’articles en biologie-médecine.

Cet article met également en perspective le positionnement des réseaux sociaux par rapport aux archives ouvertes et au libre accès.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01582202

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Toward a homogenization of academic social sites: a longitudinal study of profiles in Academia.edu, Google Scholar Citations and ResearchGate

Author : José Luis Ortega

Purpose

The main objective is to analyse the distribution of profiles from academic social networking sites according to disciplines, academic statuses and gender, and detect possible biases with regard to the real staff distribution. In this way, it intends to know whether these academic places tend to become specialized sites or, on the contrary, there is a homogenization process.

Design/methodology/approach

To this purpose, the evolution of profiles of one organization (CSIC) in three major academic social sites (Academia.edu, Google Scholar Citations and ResearchGate) through six quarterly samples since April 2014 to September 2015 are tracked.

Findings

Longitudinal results show important disciplinary biases but with strong increase of new profiles form different areas. They also suggests that these virtual spaces are gaining more stability and they tend toward a equilibrate environment.

Originality/value

This is the first longitudinal study of profiles from three major academic social networking sites and it allows to shed light on the future of these platforms’ populations.

URL : http://jlortega.scienceontheweb.net/articles/OIR_Ortega_2017.pdf

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Institutional Repositories and Academic Social Networks: Competition or Complement? A Study of Open Access Policy Compliance vs. ResearchGate Participation

Authors : Julia A. Lovett, Andrée J. Rathemacher, Divana Boukari, Corey Lang

INTRODUCTION

The popularity of academic social networks like ResearchGate and Academia.edu indicates that scholars want to share their work, yet for universities with Open Access (OA) policies, these sites may be competing with institutional repositories (IRs) for content.

This article seeks to reveal researcher practices, attitudes, and motivations around uploading their work to ResearchGate and complying with an institutional OA Policy through a study of faculty at the University of Rhode Island (URI).

METHODS

We conducted a population study to examine the participation by 558 full-time URI faculty members in the OA Policy and ResearchGate followed by a survey of 728 full-time URI faculty members about their participation in the two services.

DISCUSSION The majority of URI faculty does not participate in the OA Policy or use ResearchGate. Authors’ primary motivations for participation are sharing their work more broadly and increasing its visibility and impact.

Faculty who participate in ResearchGate are more likely to participate in the OA Policy, and vice versa. The fact that the OA Policy targets the author manuscript and not the final published article constitutes a significant barrier to participation.

CONCLUSION

Librarians should not view academic social networks as a threat to Open Access. Authors’ strong preference for sharing the final, published version of their articles provides support for calls to hasten the transition to a Gold OA publishing system.

Misunderstandings about the OA Policy and copyright indicate a need for librarians to conduct greater education and outreach to authors about options for legally sharing articles.

URL : Institutional Repositories and Academic Social Networks: Competition or Complement? A Study of Open Access Policy Compliance vs. ResearchGate Participation

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2183

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Research Output Availability on Academic Social Networks : Implications for Stakeholders in Academic Publishing

Authors : Mikael Laakso, Juho Lindman, Cenyu Shen, Linus Nyman, Bo-Christer Björk

A recent disruption in academic publishing are Academic Social Networks (ASN), i.e. web platforms such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu that have provided new ways for researchers to disseminate, search for, and retrieve research articles.

ASNs are still a grey area in terms of implications for involved stakeholders, and research on them has so far been scarce.

In an effort to map out factors related to ASN use this article provides a multi-method case study of one business school (Hanken School of Economics, Finland) that incorporates 1) a bibliometric analysis on the full-text availability of research output on ASNs for research published 2012–2014 by Hanken affiliated authors, 2) semi-structured interviews with faculty active in publishing in order to gain insight into motivations for use and use patterns, and 3) a survey distributed to all research-active faculty and doctoral students in order to gain a wider perspective on ASN use.

ASNs have for many become the primary way to provide access to one’s research output, outpacing all other types of online locations such as personal websites and repositories.

Based on the case study findings, earlier research, and recent industry developments, the article concludes with a discussion about the implications that the current trajectory of ASN use has on major stakeholders in academic publishing.

URL : http://mikaellaakso.com/Laakso_et_al_2017_ASN.pdf

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Do ResearchGate Scores create ghost academic reputations?

Authors : Enrique Orduna-Malea, Alberto Martin-Martin, Mike Thelwall, Emilio Delgado Lopez-Cozar

The academic social network site ResearchGate (RG) has its own indicator, RG Score, for its members. The high profile nature of the site means that the RG score may be used for recruitment, promotion and other tasks for which researchers are evaluated.

In response, this study investigates whether it is reasonable to employ the RG Score as evidence of scholarly reputation.

For this, three different author samples were investigated. An outlier sample includes 104 authors with high values. A Nobel sample comprises 73 Nobel winners from Medicine & Physiology, Chemistry, Physics and Economics (from 1975 to 2015).

A longitudinal sample includes weekly data on 4 authors with different RG Scores. The results suggest that high RG Scores are built primarily from activity related to asking and answering questions in the site.

In particular, it seems impossible to get a high RG Score solely through publications.

Within RG it is possible to distinguish between (passive) academics that interact little in the site and active platform users, who can get high RG Scores through engaging with others inside the site (questions, answers, social networks with influential researchers).

Thus, RG Scores should not be mistaken for academic reputation indicators.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.03339