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…
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.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the metrics provided by Publons about the scoring of publications and their relationship with impact measurements (bibliometric and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the metrics provided by Publons about the scoring of publications and their relationship with impact measurements (bibliometric and altmetric indicators).
Design/methodology/approach
In January 2018, 45,819 research articles were extracted from Publons, including all their metrics (scores, number of pre and post reviews, reviewers, etc.). Using the DOI identifier, other metrics from altmetric providers were gathered to compare the scores of those publications in Publons with their bibliometric and altmetric impact in PlumX, Altmetric.com and Crossref Event Data.
Findings
The results show that: there are important biases in the coverage of Publons according to disciplines and publishers; metrics from Publons present several problems as research evaluation indicators; and correlations between bibliometric and altmetric counts and the Publons metrics are very weak (r<0.2) and not significant.
Originality/value
This is the first study about the Publons metrics at article level and their relationship with other quantitative measures such as bibliometric and altmetric indicators.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between dissemination of research papers on Twitter and its influence on research impact.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between dissemination of research papers on Twitter and its influence on research impact.
Design/methodology/approach
Four types of journal Twitter accounts (journal, owner, publisher and no Twitter account) were defined to observe differences in the number of tweets and citations. In total, 4,176 articles from 350 journals were extracted from Plum Analytics. This altmetric provider tracks the number of tweets and citations for each paper. Student’s t-test for two-paired samples was used to detect significant differences between each group of journals. Regression analysis was performed to detect which variables may influence the getting of tweets and citations.
Findings
The results show that journals with their own Twitter account obtain more tweets (46 percent) and citations (34 percent) than journals without a Twitter account. Followers is the variable that attracts more tweets (ß=0.47) and citations (ß=0.28) but the effect is small and the fit is not good for tweets (R2=0.46) and insignificant for citations (R2=0.18).
Originality/value
This is the first study that tests the performance of research journals on Twitter according to their handles, observing how the dissemination of content in this microblogging network influences the citation of their papers.
Details
Keywords
– The purpose of this paper is to detect and describe disciplinary differences in the users and use of several social networking sites by scientists.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to detect and describe disciplinary differences in the users and use of several social networking sites by scientists.
Design/methodology/approach
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) (Spanish National Research Council) researchers registered in the most currently relevant academic social network sites (Google Scholar Citations, Academia.edu, ResearchGate (RG) and Mendeley) were analysed. In total, 6,132 profiles were classified according the eight research areas of the CSIC.
Findings
Results show that Academia.edu is massively populated by humanists and social scientists, while RG is popular among biologists. Disciplinary differences are observed across every platform. Thus, scientists from the humanities and social sciences and natural resources show a significant activity contacting other members. On the contrary, biologists are more passive using social tools.
Originality/value
This is the first study that analyses the disciplinary performance of a same sample of researchers on a varied number of academic social sites, comparing their numbers across web sites.
Details
Keywords
José Luis Ortega, Enrique Orduña-Malea and Isidro F. Aguillo
Title and URL mentions have recently been proposed as web visibility indicators instead of inlink counts. The objective of this study is to determine the accuracy of these…
Abstract
Purpose
Title and URL mentions have recently been proposed as web visibility indicators instead of inlink counts. The objective of this study is to determine the accuracy of these alternative web mention indicators in the Spanish academic system, taking into account their complexity (multi-domains) and diversity (different official languages).
Design/methodology/approach
Inlinks, title and URL mentions from 76 Spanish universities were manually extracted from the main search engines (Google, Google Scholar, Yahoo!, Bing and Exalead). Several statistical methods, such as correlation, difference tests and regression models, were used.
Findings
Web mentions, despite some limitations, can be used as substitutes for inlinks in the Spanish academic system, although these indicators are more likely to be influenced by the environment (language, web domain policy, etc.) than inlinks.
Research limitations/implications
Title mentions provide unstable results caused by the multiple name variants which an institution can present (such as acronyms and other language versions). URL mentions are more stable, but they may present atypical points due to some shortcomings, the effect of which is that URL mentions do not have the same meaning as inlinks.
Practical implications
Web mentions should be used with caution and after a cleaning-up process. Moreover, these counts do not necessarily signify connectivity, so their use in global web analysis should be limited.
Originality/value
Web mentions have previously been used in some specific academic systems (US, UK and China), but this study analyses, in depth and for the first time, an entire non-English speaking European country (Spain), with complex academic web behaviour, which helps to better explain previous web mention results.
Details
Keywords
José Luis Ortega and Isidro F. Aguillo
The aim of this paper is to present network visualisation as a way to analyse and to test the design of a website.
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to present network visualisation as a way to analyse and to test the design of a website.
Design/methodology/approach
A network graph of the access to the webometrics.info site from its web logs was analysed. Several graphs (navigational and query graphs) with different added variables were explored. SNA indicators were used to extract the main findings of these networks.
Findings
The results show the double structure of the two language versions, the central position of the search engines as hubs that distribute the access to every page, how the pages are grouped by their thematic and structural relationships, and which pages are less requested through search engines queries or are less visible.
Research limitations/implications
The results are based on the web performance of only one website and therefore generalisation has to be cautious.
Originality/value
The application of network visualisation and SNA indicators allows to explore the navigation of a website by users and to test how it is used. The graph representation makes possible an intuitive way to observe the structure of a website, the behaviour of users and information consumption.
Details
Keywords
Enrique Orduña-Malea, Jose Luis Ortega and Isidro F. Aguillo
The purpose of this paper is to detect whether both file type (a set of rich and web files) and language (English, Spanish, German, French and Italian) influence the web…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to detect whether both file type (a set of rich and web files) and language (English, Spanish, German, French and Italian) influence the web visibility of European universities.
Design/methodology/approach
A webometrics analysis of the top 200 European universities (as ranked in the Ranking web of World Universities) was carried out by a manual query for each official URL identified by using the Google search engine (April 2012). A correlation analysis between visibility and file format page count is offered according to language. Finally, a prediction of visibility is shown by using the SMOreg function.
Findings
The results indicate that Spanish and English are the languages that correlate most highly with web visibility. This correlation becomes greater – though moderate – when considering only PDF files.
Research limitations/implications
The results are limited due to the low correlation between overall page count and visibility. The lack of an accurate search engine that would assist in link counting procedures makes this process difficult.
Originality/value
An observed increase in correlation – although moderate – while analysing PDF files (in English and Spanish) is considered to be meaningful. This may indirectly confirm that specific file formats and languages generate different web visibility behaviour on European university web sites.
Details
Keywords
Małgorzata Kowalska-Chrzanowska and Przemysław Krysiński
This paper aims to answer the question of how the Polish representatives of social communication and media sciences communicate the most recent scientific findings in the media…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to answer the question of how the Polish representatives of social communication and media sciences communicate the most recent scientific findings in the media space, i.e. what types of publications are shared, what activities do they exemplify (sharing information about their own publications, leading discussions, formulating opinions), what is the form of the scientific communication created by them (publication of reference lists' descriptions, full papers, preprints and post prints) and what is the audience reception (number of downloads, displays, comments).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors present the results of analysis conducted on the presence of the most recent (2017–2019) publications by the Polish representatives of the widely understood social communication and media sciences in three selected social networking services for scientists: ResearchGate, Google Scholar and Academia.edu. The analyses covered 100 selected representatives of the scientific environment (selected in interval sampling), assigned, according to the OECD classification “Field of Science”, in the “Ludzie nauki” (Men of Science) database to the “media and communication” discipline.
Findings
The conducted analyses prove a low usage level of the potential of three analysed services for scientists by the Polish representatives of social communication and media sciences. Although 60% of them feature profiles in at least one of the services, the rest are not present there at all. From the total of 113 identified scientists' profiles, as little as 65 feature publications from 2017 to 2019. Small number of alternative metrics established in them, implies, in turn, that if these metrics were to play an important role in evaluation of the value and influence of scientific publications, then this evaluation for the researched Polish representatives of social communication and media sciences would be unfavourable.
Originality/value
The small presence of the Polish representatives of the communication and media sciences in three analysed services shows that these services may be – for the time being – only support the processes of managing own scientific output. Maybe this quite a pessimistic image of scientists' activities in the analysed services is conditioned by a simple lack of the need to be present in electronic channels of scientific communication or the lack of trust to the analysed services, which, in turn, should be linked to their shortcomings and flaws. However, unequivocal confirmation of these hypotheses might be brought by explorations covering a larger group of scientists, and complemented with survey studies. Thus, this research may constitute merely a starting point for further explorations, including elaboration of good practices with respect to usage of social media by scientists.
Details
Keywords
Luís Farinha, João Lopes, João Renato Sebastião, João José Ferreira, José Oliveira and Paulo Silveira
This paper aims to understand how the different stakeholders assess the adequacy of smart specialization policies defined for their regions.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to understand how the different stakeholders assess the adequacy of smart specialization policies defined for their regions.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper has followed a quantitative methodology through the application of questionnaire surveys to stakeholders of the various territorial regions in Portugal.
Findings
As a result, from the “resource-based view” approach applied to the various regions, the attained results highlight that the suitability of smart specialization policies defined for the Portuguese regions is not unanimous among its stakeholders.
Originality/value
The research can be used as a tool to assist regional policymakers in strategic reflection when defining and adjusting smart specialization strategies in their territories.
Details
Keywords
Manuel Ramón Tejeiro Koller, Patricio Morcillo Ortega, José Miguel Rodríguez Antón and Luís Rubio Andrada
The purpose of this paper is to analyze how firms can enhance their innovative capabilities and become more resilient. The current business environment requires a specific type of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze how firms can enhance their innovative capabilities and become more resilient. The current business environment requires a specific type of management for companies to remain competitive and innovation plays a key role in this respect. However, this means that a particular kind of corporate culture must promote innovation in the firm. This innovation culture is likely to be present in innovative companies that have survived in the long term (at least 50 years) and be the source of an adaptive advantage.
Design/methodology/approach
Using innovative Spanish firms, which were established at least 50 years ago, an exploratory factorial analysis was conducted to verify the existence of an innovation culture. Thereafter, a cluster analysis was undertaken to study differences in performance to be able to detect and identify their adaptive advantage.
Findings
The findings offer a detailed profile of old and innovative firms created in Spain. Results show that most of the studied firms (88 per cent) have an innovation culture. Furthermore, two separate groups were identified, in which one showed higher profitability and a lower adjustment to an innovation culture, while the other showed the reverse results. This suggests that innovation culture helps companies be more resilient but does not necessarily lead to higher returns.
Practical implications
Corporate culture is identified as a useful management tool in the search for more resilient enterprises. Specific cultural traits are recommended and a benchmarking tool is applied and made available upon request.
Originality/value
Although there are a number of studies which consider the concept of adaptive advantage and resilience on the one side, and on corporate innovation culture on the other, this paper seems to be the first to empirically explore the relationship of both these concepts.