Toward a homogenization of academic social sites. A longitudinal study of profiles in Academia.edu, Google Scholar Citations and ResearchGate
| Published date | 09 October 2017 |
| Pages | 812-825 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-01-2016-0012 |
| Date | 09 October 2017 |
| Author | José Luis Ortega |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
Toward a homogenization of
academic social sites
A longitudinal study of profiles in
Academia.edu, Google Scholar Citations
and ResearchGate
José Luis Ortega
CSIC, Madrid, Spain
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to analyze the distribution of profiles from academic social
networking sites according to disciplines, academic statuses and gender, and detect possible biases with
regard to the real staff distribution. In this way, it intends to know whether these academic places tend to
become specialized sites or, on the contrary, there is a homogenization process.
Design/methodology/approach –To this purpose, the evolution of profiles of one organization (Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) in three major academic social sites (Academia.edu, Google Scholar
Citations and ResearchGate) through six quarterly samples since April 2014 to September 2015 are tracked.
Findings –Longitudinal results show important disciplinary biases but with strong increase of new profiles
form different areas. They also suggest that these virtual spaces are gaining more stability and they tend
toward a equilibrate environment.
Originality/value –This is the first longitudinal study of profiles from three major academic social
networking sites and it allows to shed light on the future of these platforms’populations.
Keywords Academia.edu, ResearchGate, Longitudinal studies, Academic social sites,
Google Scholar Citations
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Social networksfor scientists have recentlybecome an important mediumto disseminate open
and free scientific outputs because many scholars use this contact network as a
communication channel. This possibility allows to track how these documents are used
by the online community, obtaining an immediate feedback on the impact of these results in
the web environment (Neal, 2012; Bartling and Friesike, 2014; Ortega, 2016). Due to this,
document-sharing services such asResearchGate (RG) and Academia.edu,and other profiling
platforms such as Google Scholar Citations (GSC), are experiencing a strong growth, caused
by a massive incorporation of new members from all over the world and every discipline.
Thus, RG has almost doubled its population in just one year (Internet Archive, 2016;
ResearchGate, 2016), while Academia.edu (2016) is now the biggest academic portal by
number of registered users, with more than 46 million of members in December 2016.
GSC, in the meantime, has reached more than half million of profiles in less than four years
(Ortega, 2015a). This strong addition of researchers to academic social sites in a short time
period couldbe the reason that the populationof these spaces could be biasedand it could not
be representative of thereal world. Thus, for example, it has been confirmed that Academia.
edu is mainly populated by researchers from developing countries (Ortega, 2016) and
from Humanities and Social Sciences (Almousa, 2011; Thelwall and Kousha, 2014); GSC has
been dominated from the beginning by researchers from Computer Sciences and related
fields (Ortega and Aguillo, 2012; Ortega, 2015c); and RG has shown a higher presence of
physicians and biologists (Thelwall and Kousha, 2017). These imbalances could
have important implications for the resulting statistics and the meaning of their metrics.
Thus, for instance, a clinical paper would have more views, downloads and/or readers,
Online Information Review
Vol. 41 No. 6, 2017
pp. 812-825
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-01-2016-0012
Received 20 July 2016
Revised 27 April 2017
Accepted 15 June 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
812
OIR
41,6
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