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    Social Network Sites for Scientists: A Quantitative Survey
    Social Network Sites for Scientists: A Quantitative Survey
    Social Network Sites for Scientists: A Quantitative Survey
    Ebook353 pages16 hours

    Social Network Sites for Scientists: A Quantitative Survey

    By Jose Luis Ortega

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    About this ebook

    Social Network Sites for Scientists: A Quantitative Survey explores the newest social network sites (for example, ResearchGate and Academia.edu) and web bibliographic platforms (Mendeley, Zotero) that have recently emerged for the scholarly community to use in the interchange of information and documents.

    Chapters describe their main characteristics, what their advantages and limitations are, and the researchers that populate these websites. The surveys included in the book have been conducted following a quantitative approach, and measure the strength of the services provided by the sites in terms of use and activity. In addition, they also discuss the implications of new products in the future of scientific communication and their impact on research activities and evaluation.

    • Analyzes social network sites form scientists using a quantitative approach
    • Introduces the quantitative study of the main characteristic and functionalities of each platform, and the activity that they develop
    • Offers a scientific review of the most relevant and current studies on this issue, discussing their results and commenting on their implications for scientific communication and research evaluation
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherElsevier Science
    Release dateJul 26, 2016
    ISBN9780081005897
    Social Network Sites for Scientists: A Quantitative Survey
    Author

    Jose Luis Ortega

    José Luis Ortega is a web researcher in the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). He achieved a fellowship to the Cybermetrics Lab of the CSIC, where he finished his doctoral studies. In 2005, he was hired by the Virtual Knowledge Studio of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Arts, and in 2008 he received a full position in the Vice-presidency for Scientific and Technological Research at the CSIC, working in research evaluation. He collaborates with the Cybermetrics Lab in research areas such as Webometrics, Web usage mining, Visualization of Information, Social network analysis and Web bibliometrics.

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      Book preview

      Social Network Sites for Scientists - Jose Luis Ortega

      etc.

      Chapter 1

      Introduction

      Abstract

      This first chapter begins with an introduction to the past and current context of social networks for scientists and a review of the rise of the Web and its impact on scholarly communication. It also explores the appearance of the Web 2.0 philosophy and the transformation of the publishing system as a result of the open access movement. Social networking sites are described as predecessors of the academic platforms and the revolution of altmetric indicators is discussed in detail. An examination of the definitions and typologies of academic social sites is then provided as well as a consideration of the business models of the platforms studied. Finally, several methodological aspects are described such as the proposed indicators, and the sources and data extraction processes are explained.

      Keywords

      Web 2.0; altmetrics; social networks; open access; social networks for scientists

      1.1 The Web and the Web 2.0 Concept

      At the dawn of the new century the Web had become consolidated into all aspects of life, this new and revolutionary information technology has transformed the information habits of the entire world and had made possible the immediate diffusion of content to any part of the globe. Born into the academic environment, the Net soon reached every facet of human activity, turning information into an important transformational asset for the rising knowledge society (Castells, 2010). The successful changes brought about by this disruptive technology do not simply rely on instant access to an enormous amount of data, videos, pictures, etc., but on the possibility of avoiding those mediators that, at that time, controlled the information flows. This singular characteristic meant that users would became publishers and distributors of their own creations, without any gatekeeper to censure or take advantage of its position (Van Dijck, 2009). Authors that published their own books online, little shops that offered their products direct to the consumer and businesses that advertised themselves on fancy web pages proliferated exponentially. Thus a great part of the information that ran through the Web was content created by its own users, being at the same time sources and receivers according to communication theory (Morris & Ogan, 1996).

      In spite of this revolutionary change in the communication process, this world remained linear, unidirectional and static, where users only surfed the Web to look for information or built fixed websites (Cormode & Krishnamurthy, 2008). However, several technological advances led to the development of a more dynamic environment at the start of the twenty-first century. New protocols (SOAP), languages (XML, RDF) and formats (RSS) were developed by the industry to facilitate the expansion of electronic commerce on the Web. This sector demanded spaces online where commercial transactions were easy, fast and safe. In this way the Web was converted into a platform for services from where users could now not only search for information, but carry out any type of action (Jarvenpaa & Todd, 1996). Now, we have changed from searching for flights to buying the ticket, from knowing the requirements for a service to directly applying for that service and from visiting a friend’s homepage to looking at the postings on their

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