connected for success: how network centrality on researchgate relates to bibliometrics, altmetrics...

Connected for Success? How Network Centrality on ResearchGate Relates to

Bibliometrics, Altmetrics and Webometrics

Christoph Lutz

INSNA Sunbelt Conference

27th of June 2015

Sunbelt 2015

Connected for Success?

Christoph Lutz

Background: Social Media & Science 1

Sunbelt 2015


Christoph Lutz

What do we know about social media in science?

• A few studies on general social media use (Gruzd & Goertzen, 2013; Procter et al. , 2010)

• Some research on academic blogs and Twitter in science

• Active research field «altmetrics»

• Very few empirical studies about academic SNS

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Christoph Lutz

Popularity of «altmetrics» on Google Trends

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Current research on altmetrics

• Comparing 11 webometric indicators with WOS citations: correlations found for Twitter, Facebook wall posts, research highlights, blogs, mainstream media and forums; not enough evidence for Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Q&A sites and Reddit (Thelwall et al., 2013)

• Mendeley readers a relatively good altmetrics indicator for citations later on (Haustein et al., 2014; Mohammadi & Thelwall, 2014)

• Very few studies about ResearchGate (e.g., Thelwall & Kousha, 2015)

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Christoph Lutz

Network study by Jordan (2014) about academia.edu

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What about social capital and relations?

• Relations with other researchers are important resources

- Promotion

- Publication

- Invitation

- Collaboration…

• Social capital matters

Bringing in the relational aspect in impact measurement… beyond citations

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Framework

• Resonance of publications

• Resonance of the person

• Public perception

Altmetrics

Influence

Webometrics

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Sample

• 302 users from Swiss university

• 68.5 percent male, 31.5 percent female

• 40 percent PhD, 41 post-doc/assistant profs and 16 percent full profs (rest: admin)

• Collection of data in March 2014

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Scientometrics 2.0: Results 2

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N=885

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

Mendeley readers

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

Scopus citations

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

137

73

10

914

518

121

725

328

932

536

139

743

346

950

554

157

761

364

968

572

175

779

382

986

5

citeulike bookmarks

1. Altmetrics

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Christoph Lutz

2. Influence: ResearchGate network metrics

Activity and network of the researchers, attention, resonance of individual publications.

Person:

#Followers, #Followees, #Q&A, #Profile Views, #Impact Points/ RG Score

Publications:

#Papers, #Uploads, #Views, #Citations, #Requests, #Downloads

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44 = Sven Reinecke

29 = Miriam Meckel

55 = Marcus Schögel

117 = Tobias Jenert

54 = Joachim Schelp

23 = Jörg Hofstetter

8 = Christian Hoffmann

10 = Christoph Lutz

80 = Michael Lechner

185 = Monika Bütler

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Results match with academia.edu study

Jordan (2014)

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Schools

= SOM

= SEPS

= LS

= SOF

= SHSS

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Position

= Full professor

= Assistant professor

= Post-Doc/Procect leader

= PhD student

(No Isolates and Pendings)

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Network statistics

• Density: only 3 percent of all possible connections realized

• It is a relatively small community: average distance = 3.12; diameter = 9

• Internal networking most prevalent : On average, members of the UniSG have 16 followers, 50 percent of which are UniSG colleagues. There are a couple of outliers and isolates

• High homophily along institutes

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3. Webometrics

• We analyzed mentions of publications on:

Wikipedia (3 quotes)

Blogs (6 quotes)

Facebook (Comments on public pages with reference to 4 articles)

Twitter (227 tweets)

Delicious (100 bookmarks)

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Distribution of number of tweets for articles

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

1

19

37

55

73

91

10

9

12

7

14

5

16

3

18

1

19

9

21

7

23

5

25

3

27

1

28

9

30

7

32

5

34

3

36

1

37

9

39

7

41

5

43

3

45

1

46

9

48

7

50

5

52

3

54

1

55

9

57

7

59

5

61

3

63

1

64

9

66

7

68

5

70

3

72

1

73

9

75

7

77

5

79

3

81

1

82

9

84

7

86

5

88

3

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Correlations between indicators

Position 1 Publication

success 2 +

Publication resonance 4 +

Centrality 3 +

Altmetrics 5 + Webometrics 3 +

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Summary

Activity Centrality Publication

success (h-Index)

Publication resonance

(RG) Position Altmetrics

Centrality

0.3

Publication success

0.2

0.15

Publication resonance

0.3

0.35

0.7

Position X 0.2

0.5

0.45

Altmetrics X 0.15

0.65

0.6

0.35

Webometrics X X

0.35

0.2

0.15

0.25

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Conclusion

• Altmetrics have a strong correlation with traditional measures of impact.

• The correlation of centrality measures with traditional measures of scientific impact is weaker. A dynamic perspective might be necessary here.

• Impact can barely be «forced» via communication efforts. It has to emerge from the recognition and reaction of other users.

• Webometrics only have a weak correation with traditional impact measures (in line with current bibliometric studies, e.g., Costas et al., 2014).

Altmetrics and webometrics allow more differentiated view of impact.

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Christoph Lutz

Thank you for your attention!

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Christoph Lutz

References

Costas, R., Zahedi, Z., & Wouters, P. (2014): Do “altmetrics” correlate with citations? Extensive comparison of altmetric indicators with citations from a multidisciplinary perspective. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), early view. Online: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.23309/abstract

Haustein, S., Peters, I., Bar-Ilan, J., Priem, J., Shema, H., & Terliesner, J. (2014): Coverage and adoption of altmetrics sources in the bibliometric community. Scientometrics, 101(2), 1145-1163. Online: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-013-1221-3

Jordan, K. (2014). Academics and their online networks: Exploring the role of academic social networking sites. First Monday, 19(8). Online: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4937/4159

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.23309/abstract


http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-013-1221-3









http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4937/4159

http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4937/4159

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References

Mohammadi, E. & Thelwall, M. (2014): Mendeley readership altmetrics for the social sciences and humanities: Research evaluation and knowledge flows. Journal of the Association for Informations Science and Technology (JASIST), 65(8), 1627-1638. Online: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.23071/abstract Priem, J., Taraborelli, D., Groth, P., Neylon, C. (2010). Altmetrics – A Manifesto. Online: http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/ Thelwall, M., Haustein, S., Lariviére, V., & Sugimoto, C. R. (2013): Do Altmetrics Work? Twitter and Ten Other Social Web Services. PLoS One, 8(5): e64841. Online: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0064841#pone-0064841-t003 Thelwall & Kousha (2015): ResearchGate: Disseminating, communicating, and measuring Scholarship? Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), 66(5), 876-889. Online: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.23236/abstract


http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/



http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0064841








