Do highly cited researchers successfully use the social web?

Abstract

Academics can now use the web and the social websites to disseminate scholarly information in a variety of different ways. Although some scholars have taken advantage of these new online opportunities, it is not clear how widespread their uptake is or how much impact they can have. This study assesses the extent to which successful scientists have social web presences, focusing on one influential group: highly cited researchers working at European institutions. It also assesses the impact of these presences. We manually and systematically identified if the European highly cited researchers had profiles in Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic Search, Mendeley, Academia and LinkedIn or any content in SlideShare. We then used URL mentions and altmetric indicators to assess the impact of the web presences found. Although most of the scientists had an institutional website of some kind, few had created a profile in any social website investigated, and LinkedIn -the only non-academic site in the list -was the most popular. Scientists having one kind of social web profile were more likely to have another in many cases, especially in the life sciences and engineering. In most cases it was possible to estimate the relative impact of the profiles using a readily available statistic and there were disciplinary differences in the impact of the different kinds of profiles. Most social web profiles had some evidence of uptake, if not impact; nevertheless, the value of the indicators used is unclear.

Web indicators for research evaluation. Part 2: Social media metrics

“…It also provides some information for individual members, such as the total number of publication views and downloads, as well as how many followers they have (Kadriu, 2013). Rankings of institutions based on ResearchGate statistics correlate moderately well with other rankings of academic institutions (e.g., The Times Higher Education Ranking or The CWTS Leiden Ranking), suggesting that ResearchGate use broadly reflects traditional academic capital at the institutional level (Thelwall;Kousha, 2014).…”

Librarians as Advocates of Social Media for Researchers: A Social Media Project Initiated by Linköping University Library, Sweden

“…International studies show that some researchers are active users of social media tools and that the numbers are increasing, but the majority still remain hesitant (Lupton, 2014;Mas-Bleda, Thelwall, Kousha & Aguillo, 2014). A researcher should consider social media as a communication tool since it is becoming more common that universities and funding agencies, especially in the US and the UK, are convinced that outreach activities are important both for promoting and explaining research to the public (Scott, 2013;Wilkinson & Weitkamp, 2013).…”

Posted, visited, exported: Altmetrics in the social tagging system BibSonomy

“…The idea of altmetrics is to create impact measures that are available much faster, by deducing impact from the usage of publications in web-based tools themselves. For example, Mas-Bleda et al (2014) showed for a set of highly cited researchers that among those who made active use of the social web for sharing publications or slides, almost all created some form of impact, measured in terms of document or profile views in these systems. Next to the aspect of speed, other altmetrics have other advantages, like diversity, openness, and broadness (Bornmann, 2014a).…”