No scholar is an island: The impact of sharing in the work life of scholars

Abstract

The sharing of scholarly articles is an intrinsic and often ignored facet of the value and mission of scholarship. It is so entwined in the daily work life of scholars that it has almost become second nature, an integral part of the research process itself. This article addresses this often overlooked area of research in usage studies. In an international survey of 1,000 published scholars, the Beyond Downloads project examined their sharing behaviours in order to gain a more contextualized and accurate picture of their usage beyond download patterns and citation counts. Scholars share published articles with others as a mode of content discovery and dissemination, particularly if they work in groups, and most expect to increase their sharing in the future. While their methods of sharing articles may change, and their reasons for sharing may vary from self‐promotion to the more altruistic motives of scientific progress, they desire to share the final published versions of articles with their colleagues.

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

“…None of the major publishers allows sharing of the final published version of record on commercial sites like ResearchGate, unless, of course, the article was published under a CC-BY license. Yet the publisher's PDF is the version that 81.8% of our survey respondents reported posting on ResearchGate, confirming the findings of other recent studies (Borrego, 2017;Jamali, 2017;Laakso et al, 2017;Tenopir et al, 2016). Even some publishers that allow authors to post accepted manuscripts on non-commercial sites including IRs and personal websites often explicitly prohibit or limit posting on commercial sites like ResearchGate (American Association for the Advancement of Science, n. Finally, our statistical analysis of the survey results, in which contributing full-texts to ResearchGate and compliance with the OA Policy were positively correlated, shows that faculty are not using ResearchGate to the exclusion of the institutional repository.…”

“…Respondents indicated that their primary motivations for participation, as well as the benefits of participation, were sharing their work more broadly and increasing the visibility and impact of their work, confirming earlier findings (Creaser et al, 2010;Cullen & Chawner, 2011;Kim, 2011;Manca & Ranieri, 2017;MIT Libraries, 2015;Nicholas et al, 2012;Tenopir et al, 2016). ResearchGate scored higher than the OA Policy on both of these factors.…”

“…Echoing the recent findings of Tenopir et al (2016) and Borrego (2017), a significant theme throughout our survey results was authors' preference for sharing the final published versions of their articles and their dislike for sharing their peer-reviewed manuscripts, the version uploaded to the IR as specified by the OA Policy. Reasons for their dislike of the manuscript version (see Table 6) included a preference for the final published version of record; not wanting multiple versions of the same work to be available; not wanting a version with potential errors and typos to be made publicly available; a belief that the manuscript version was often messy, potentially leading to misunderstandings by readers; the fact that the manuscript version does not share the pagination of the final version, making it difficult to cite; not having ready access to the final manuscript version, especially when not the corresponding author; and the time and effort it takes to reassemble the manuscript version into a coherent whole, for example re-integrating figures and tables into the text.…”

“…The ability to upload and share the full-text of publications is a feature valued by users of ResearchGate and similar academic social networks (Campos-Freire & Rúas-Araújo, 2016;Corvello, Genovese, & Verteramo, 2014;Elsayed, 2015;Laakso et al, 2017;Marra, 2015;Matthews, 2016;Nicholas et al, 2015;Tenopir et al, 2016;Van Noorden, 2014;Wu, Stvilia, & Lee, 2016). This contributes to ResearchGate being a significant source of freely available scholarly content.…”

“…edu, which is preferred by researchers in the social sciences and especially the humanities Campos-Freire & Rúas-Araújo, 2016;Elsayed, 2015;Jamali et al, 2016;Matthews, 2016;Mikki et al, 2015;Nández & Borrego, 2013;Ortega, 2015;Thelwall & Kousha, 2015;Thelwall & Kousha, 2017;Van Noorden, 2014 Míguez-González et al, 2017;Mikki et al, 2015;Ortega, 2015;Singh, 2016;Tran & Lyon, 2017;Van Noorden, 2014). Use of ResearchGate is notably higher than that of Academia.edu among senior researchers Matthews, 2016;Mikki et al, 2015).The ability to upload and share the full-text of publications is a feature valued by users of ResearchGate and similar academic social networks (Campos-Freire & Rúas-Araújo, 2016;Corvello, Genovese, & Verteramo, 2014;Elsayed, 2015;Laakso et al, 2017;Marra, 2015;Matthews, 2016;Nicholas et al, 2015;Tenopir et al, 2016;Van Noorden, 2014;Wu, Stvilia, & Lee, 2016). This contributes to ResearchGate being a significant source of freely available scholarly content.…”