Research universities on the ResearchGate social networking site: An examination of institutional differences, research activity level, and social networks formed

Anatomising the impact of ResearchGate followers and followings on influence identification

Influence analysis, derived from Social Network Analysis (SNA), is extremely useful in academic literature analytic. Different Academic Social Network Sites (ASNS) have been widely examined for influence analysis in terms of co-authorship and co-citation networks. The impact of other network-based features, such as followers and followings, provided by ASNS such as ResearchGate (RG) and Academia is yet to be anatomised. As proven in ingrained social theories, the followers and followings have significant impact in influence prorogation. This research aims at examining the same in one of the widely adopted ASNS, RG. The rendering process is developed to render real-time RG information, which is modelled into graph. Standard centrality measures are implemented to identify influential users from the constructed RG graph. Each centrality measure gives a list of top- k influential RG users. The results are compared with RGScore and Total Research Interest (TRI) to discover the most effective centrality measure. Betweenness and closeness centrality measures have shown the outperforming results compared with others. A procedure is established to discover influential RG users that are commonly present in all top- k centrality results to identify dominant skills, affiliations, departments and locations from the rendered data.

Academic social networks metrics: an effective indicator for university performance?

Social networks have become popular among researchers and scientists. Specialized platforms for researchers offer many metrics and indicators which are used to evaluate various scientists and assess the strength of their impact. In this article the authors perform systematic comparison between the main university level ResearchGate (RG) metrics: total RG Score, number of publications, number of affiliated profiles and ARWU. A tool for acquiring the RG metrics of research units and a framework for calculating alternative university ranks was implemented and tested. As a point of reference the ranking system of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU, 2019) was used. The authors used a web scraping technique to acquire data. Data analysis was based on Spearman's rho and multiple linear regression (MLR). Ten additional ranks were developed and compared with the benchmark ranking. The k-means clustering method was used to identify the groups of ARWU universities. The research results show that the metrics provided by specialized social networks can be used for the assessment of universities, however, an in-depth evaluation requires a more advanced procedure and indicators to measure many areas of scholarly activity like research, integration, application, teaching, and co-creation. Clustering method showed also that the distance between the ARWU universities measured in values of RG metrics are bigger for the top of the ranking. The university authorities should encourage researchers to use specialized social networks, and train them how to do it, to promote not only their own achievements, but also to increase the impact and recognition of their respective research units. At the end of the article some limitations of the method used and some practical recommendations for the university authorities were formulated.

Q&A participation and behavioral patterns on academic social networking sites: a comparative study of academic, corporate and government institutions on ResearchGate

Purpose

This paper aims to explore question and answer (Q&A) participation and behavioral patterns on academic social networking sites (ASNSs) from the perspective of multiple subjects such as academic, corporate and government institutions.

Design/methodology/approach

Focused on the Q&A service of ASNSs, this study chooses ResearchGate (RG) as the target ASNS and collects a large-scale data set from it, involving a sample of users and a Q&A sample about academic, corporate and government institutions. First, it studies the law of Q&A participation and the distribution of the type of user according to the sample of users. Second, it compares question-asking behavior and question-answering behavior stimulated by questions among the three types of institutions based on the Q&A sample. Finally, it discusses the Q&A participation and behavioral patterns of the three types of institutions in academic Q&A exchanges with full consideration of institutional attributes, and provides some suggestions for institutions and ASNSs.

Findings

The results show that these three types of institutions generally have a low level of participation in the Q&A service of RG, and the numbers of questions and answers proposed by institutional users conform to the power-law distribution. There are differences in Q&A participation and Q&A behavioral patterns among academic, corporate and government institutions. Government and academic institutions have more users participating in the Q&A service and their users are more willing to ask questions, while corporate institutions have fewer users who participate in the Q&A service and their users are inclined to provide answers. Questions from corporate institutions attract much more attention than those from the other two types of institutions.

Originality/value

This study reveals and compares the Q&A participation and the behavioral patterns of the three types of institutions in academic Q&A, thus deepening the understanding of the attributes of institutions in the academic information exchange context. In practice, the results can help guide different institutions to use the Q&A service of ASNSs more effectively and help ASNSs to better optimize their Q&A service.

Evaluation of the national research foundation-rated researchers’ output at a South African university

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to establish the research impact of the National Research Foundation (NRF)-rated researchers’ output at the North-West University (NWU), South Africa, from 2006 to 2017.

Design/methodology/approach

The study used bibliometrics and altmetrics methods to determine the production of research outputs and the impact of NWU’s NRF-rated researchers’ publications. Various tools including Google Scholar (GS), Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, ResearchGate (RG) and Mendeley were used to collect data. The citations in the three bibliographic databases were used as proxy for academic impact, while reads and readerships in RG and Mendeley were used to determine societal impact of the researchers. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to test the relationship between citations in the three bibliographic databases and reads and readerships in RG and Mendeley.

Findings

The main findings were that the majority of NWU’s NRF-rated researchers’ publications emanated from GS, followed by Scopus and then WoS. GS output also had more citations. There were 6,026 research outputs in RG which were read for 676,919 times and 5,850 in Mendeley with 142,621 readerships. Correlations between RG and all three bibliographic databases’ citations were scant. Strong relationships between the three bibliographic databases’ citations and Mendeley readerships were found.

Practical implications

Academic librarians who interact with researchers who would like to predict future academic impact of their documents can be advised to consider Mendeley readerships with some level of confidence compared to RG reads. These results point to the importance of constant self-evaluation by researchers to ensure that they have balanced profiles across the three main bibliographic databases that are also considered for ratings. These results point to the relevancy of GS to evaluate research beyond the academy.

Social implications

The fact that researchers are contributing research that seeks to improve the general welfare of the population (beyond the academy) is a positive sign as society look up to researchers and research to solve their socio-economic problems. Social media play an important role as they serve as indicators that indicators point to wider research impacts and wider access by many different groups of people including the members of society at large. They point to research that is accessible to not only researchers and those who have access to their research but also the society at large.

Originality/value

Although the practice of rating researchers is common in different research ecosystems, the researchers could not find any evidence of studies conducted using a combination of bibliometrics and altmetrics to asses rated researchers’ output. This study covers and compares social impact based on data obtained from two academic social media sites and three main bibliographic databases (GS, Scopus and WoS).

Favoritism or equality: difference analysis of users' utilization of academic social networks for top research corporations

Purpose

As an important platform for academic communication and knowledge acquisition, academic social network (ASN) has attracted worldwide researchers. The purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the differences of corporation researchers in ASN utilization from the two aspects of social performance and academic performance.

Design/methodology/approach

Applying knowledge-based theory, this paper decoupled ASN into social network and academic network and measured utilization of users by social performance and academic performance. Hypotheses were proposed from the perspectives of research areas and corporate reputation. In the part of empirical research, the top 92 research corporations were selected as the sample, and relevant metric data from the member profile pages on ResearchGate was collected for comparing analysis to explore their utilization characteristics.

Findings

The results show that users of different research corporations have certain favoritism in their utilization of ASNs. Science and technology-oriented corporations are better in comprehensive social performance and academic quality. Science-oriented corporations are better at utilizing the interactive functions. However, neither social utilization nor academic utilization, technology-oriented corporations perform well.

Originality/value

This paper focuses on corporation researchers, who have started to embrace ASNs but whose behaviors were less studied. The research paradigm is an expansion and enrichment of the dual network decoupling theory in the field of ASN research. It also deepens the research on ASN utilization of corporation researchers and could give references for ASNs to improve service for corporation users in different research areas.

Peer review

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-12-2019-0389

ResearchGate Altmetric scores and Scopus bibliometric indicators among lecturers

Purpose

Many researchers in ResearchGate (RG) engage in scholarly activity and share research findings. The researchers' activities in this social network may increase the probability of their works being cited. Thus, this study aims to examine the status of RG indices and the Scopus citation indicators of the allied medical sciences lecturers and their association with their academic rankings.

Design/methodology/approach

A cross-sectional, descriptive analytical study was performed. As a first step, the names of all 50 lecturers at the School of Allied Medical Sciences were searched through RG to find all the lecturers with profiles. Then, the h-index as well as the number of citations by them were extracted from Scopus. Spearman's correlation coefficient test was performed to explore the association of the RG score with the Scopus citation indicators and the academic rankings of the lecturers.

Findings

The findings demonstrated that there is a statistically significant relationship between the RG indices (except the question and answer indices) and the Scopus citation indicators with the academic rankings of the lecturers (p-value < 0.01).

Originality/value

Knowledge of the significant relationship between the RG indices and the Scopus citation indicators may encourage the lecturers to make more efforts to be active on RG. Furthermore, policymakers can encourage their researchers and lecturers to be more active in this scientific social network, which could lead to promoting the university rankings in the global and national rankings systems.

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 purpose of this paper was to assess the presence of researchers on two author identifier services (ORCID and ResearcherID) and to compare the results with two academic social networks (Academia.edu and ResearchGate) using the categories of discipline, career advancement, and gender in a medium sized multidisciplinary university in France (University of Caen Normandy). Metrics such as number of publications per researcher, h-indexes, and average number of citations were also assessed. Of the 1,047 researchers studied, 673 (64.3%) had at least one profile on the four sites, and the number of researchers having multiple profiles decreased as more sites were studied. Researchers with only one profile numbered 385 (36.8%), while 204 (19.5%) had two, 68 (6.5%) had three, and only 16 (1.5%) had four. ResearchGate had by far the highest number of researchers present, with 569 (54.3%), whereas presence on the other sites was about 15%. We found that, apart from Academia.edu, researchers in Sciences, Technology, and Medicine (STM) were over-represented. Overall, experienced male researchers were over-represented on the sites studied. Our results show that, because of the numerous profiles lacking publication references (particularly on ORCID) and a low presence of researchers on the four sites studied (except for ResearchGate), assessing the number of publications, h-indexes, or average number of citations per article of individuals or institutions remains challenging. Finally, our data showed that French researchers have not adopted the use of the two author identifier sites (i.e. ORCID and ResearcherID). As long as French researchers remain reticent, these sites will not be able to provide the services for which they were created: addressing the problem of author misidentification, consequently providing exhaustive access to scientific production and bibliometric indicators of individual researchers and their institutions.

Análisis de las redes de colaboración entre las Instituciones de Educación Superior en Colombia de acuerdo con ResearchGate

El objetivo del presente artículo es analizar las redes de colaboración entre las Instituciones de Educación Superior (IES) en Colombia de acuerdo con el parámetro de “Top collaborating institutions” en ResearchGate. El artículo efectúa una comparación entre las redes de las Instituciones de Educación Superior acreditadas en alta calidad y las no acreditadas, de acuerdo con los lineamientos del Sistema Nacional de Acreditación en Colombia. El análisis de la colaboración institucional se realiza mediante la construcción de redes de trabajo conjunto, en el programa UCINET; se considera la primera universidad registrada en el “Top collaborating institutions” publicado en perfil de ResearchGate de cada Institución de Educación Superior. Los resultados demuestran que las instituciones acreditadas poseen una red de colaboración bien conectada e integrada. Por el contrario, las instituciones no acreditadas poseen una red de colaboración débil y poco interconectada. Además, las instituciones no acreditadas buscan colaborar principalmente con IES acreditadas y no entre ellas. De esta manera, los esfuerzos de las instituciones no acreditadas no están bien coordinados y se diluyen en la distribución de sus relaciones colaborativas.

The means-end cognitions of perceived information quality in academic social networking sites

Academic social networking sites (ASNS) have received substantial attention in recent years. The information quality of academic resources is vital to users. In order to improve the users’ information quality experience, it is necessary to understand how users perceive information quality in ASNS and what factors or relations affect their results of information quality perception. Drawing on the approach of the means-end chain, our study implemented a laddering interviews with ASNS users. We both elucidated various factors influencing information quality perception and constructed a hierarchical value map, all of the complex relationships were quantitatively calculated and represented in a hierarchical structure. The results showed that 13 factors were identified and 18 relations were described. This study contributes by addressing the process of users’ information quality perception in the ASNS and by giving a deep and nuanced understanding of the factors affecting information quality. This is different from prior research that mainly focused on information quality evaluation. The results not only enrich the information quality research but also can be used to guide ASNS’ platform design and management.