Faculty Use of Author Identifiers and Researcher Networking Tools

Abstract

This cross-sectional survey focused on faculty use and knowledge of author identifiers and researcher networking systems, and professional use of social media, at a large state university. Results from 296 completed faculty surveys representing all disciplines (9.3% response rate) show low levels of awareness and variable resource preferences. The most utilized author identifier was ORCID while ResearchGate, LinkedIn, and Google Scholar were the top profiling systems. Faculty also reported some professional use of social media platforms. The survey data will be utilized to improve library services and develop intra-institutional collaborations in scholarly communication, research networking, and research impact. echnology has advanced at a remarkable speed for decades. However, scholarly publishing has not kept up with the rate of technological change for the past two decades, and traditional publishing models continue to prevail. 1 Although new scholarly communication methods such as open access and digital repositories have been evolving, there is no well-established and universally accepted communication model that can "define merit and provide rewards" for researchers. 2 This is exacerbated by the lack of necessary tools and services that enhance proper author identification for a scholar's output. 3 The rapid growth and development of researcher networking systems and social networking platforms plays an important role in improving the connection of researchers academically and socially. Researcher-or faculty-specific networking systems usually provide a professional profile to which the scholar can upload and display publication data, research interests, and educational and employment data. Some of these systems, occasionally nicknamed "Facebook for scientists," allow researchers to share knowledge, discuss shared interests, and comment on or criticize published work. 4 Additionally, some "general" social networking platforms can serve as a vehicle for sharing work and/or networking with professional colleagues. These may include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, MySpace, Pinterest, Tumblr, and MeetUp. In recent years, most, if not all, academic research institutions have been developing and promoting faculty profiling systems designed to fulfill a variety of purposes including departmental websites, faculty tenure and promotion systems, administrative reporting, credentialing, and facilitating research collaboration across disciplines.

Use of author identifier services (ORCID, ResearcherID) and academic social networks (Academia.edu, ResearchGate) by the researchers of the University of Caen Normandy (France): A case study

“…The presence of researchers on the four sites grouped by scientific disciplines (i.e. STM or HSS) is presented in Fig 1. As previously described, our data show that HSS researchers are over-represented on Academia.edu [17,27], whereas STM researchers were over-represented on ResearchGate [7,17,18,23,38]. However, regardless of the fact that ORCID and ResearcherID are not known to be specifically dedicated to HSS or STM, STM researchers were over-represented on them.…”

“…Indeed, difficulties encountered in tracking scholarly and institutional publications are numerous due to identical or similar names, name changes over time due to marriage, or the use of aliases or author groups [6]. Change of researcher affiliations over time, due to researcher mobility and/or lack of uniformity when declaring affiliations in articles are also well known difficulties [7,8]. Different spellings of names can occur due to alternative transliterations of some author names from other alphabets (e.g.…”

“…Numerous articles have been published on ASNs, especially Academia.edu and Research-Gate [17], or to explain the usefulness of AIDs (e.g. [8,15,13,16]), but few studies have been conducted specifically to assess how AIDs are used by researchers [7,18,19]. It is important to examine the usage of these systems to know who and where the users of AIDs are, and to assess whether these tools could improve the characterization of institutional or researchers' scientific output.…”

Investigating Science Researchers’ Presence on Academic Profile Websites: A Case Study of a Canadian Research University

“…It was noted that, although ORCID is a relatively new profile platform, 29% of the researchers had established a profile on this platform, a rate much higher than the rate of 3-15% reported in previous literature (Mikki et al 2015;Tran & Lyon 2017). In recent years, many efforts have been made to promote ORCID.…”

“…They found that while 37% of the researchers had at least one profile, ResearchGate was the most popular site (30%), followed by Google Scholar Citations (8%), while Academia.edu and ORCID only had 4% and 3% presence, respectively. In another study, Tran and Lyon (2017) surveyed the use of APWs in a US research university and found low levels of awareness of these resources. In terms of popularity of the profile websites, they found that the most used ones included ResearchGate (64%), Google Scholar Citations (54%), Academia.edu (24%), and ORCID (15%).…”