Research Article: “Beyond Citations: Scholars’ Visibility on the Social Web” (Preprint)
Title
Beyond Citations: Scholars’ Visibility on the Social Web
Authors
Judit Bar-Ilan
Department of Information Science, Bar-Ilan University (Israel)
Stefanie Haustein
Central Library, Forschungszentrum Julich (Germany)
Isabella Peters
Department of Information Science, Heinrich-Heine-University (Germany)
Jason Priem
School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (USA)
Hadas Shema
Department of Information Science, Bar-Ilan University (Israel)
Jens Terliesnes
Department of Information Science, Heinrich-Heine-University (Germany)
Source
Prepint via arXiv
This paper will be presented at the 17th International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators. Montreal, Canada, 5-8 Sept. 2012.
Abstract
Traditionally, scholarly impact and visibility have been measured by counting publications and citations in the scholarly literature. However, increasingly scholars are also visible on the Web, establishing presences in a growing variety of social ecosystems. But how wide and established is this presence, and how do measures of social Web impact relate to their more traditional counterparts? To answer this, we sampled 57 presenters from the 2010 Leiden STI Conference, gathering publication and citations counts as well as data from the presenters’ Web “footprints.” We found Web presence widespread and diverse: 84% of scholars had homepages, 70% were on LinkedIn, 23% had public Google Scholar profiles, and 16% were on Twitter. For sampled scholars’ publications, social reference manager bookmarks were compared to Scopus and Web of Science citations; we found that Mendeley covers more than 80% of sampled articles, and that Mendeley bookmarks are significantly correlated (r=.45) to Scopus citation counts.
Direct to Full Text (14 pages; PDF)
Filed under: Academic Libraries, Data Files, Journal Articles, Libraries, Profiles, Resources, School Libraries
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.