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
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Background: Social Media & Science 1
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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
Sunbelt 2015
Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
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Popularity of «altmetrics» on Google Trends
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Christoph Lutz
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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)
Sunbelt 2015
Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
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Network study by Jordan (2014) about academia.edu
Sunbelt 2015
Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
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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
Sunbelt 2015
Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
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Framework
• Resonance of publications
• Resonance of the person
• Public perception
Altmetrics
Influence
Webometrics
Sunbelt 2015
Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
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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
Sunbelt 2015
Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
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Scientometrics 2.0: Results 2
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Christoph Lutz
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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
Sunbelt 2015
Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
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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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Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
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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
Sunbelt 2015
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Christoph Lutz
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Results match with academia.edu study
Jordan (2014)
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Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
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Schools
= SOM
= SEPS
= LS
= SOF
= SHSS
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Connected for Success?
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Position
= Full professor
= Assistant professor
= Post-Doc/Procect leader
= PhD student
(No Isolates and Pendings)
Sunbelt 2015
Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
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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
Sunbelt 2015
Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
Page 18
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)
Sunbelt 2015
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Christoph Lutz
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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
Sunbelt 2015
Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
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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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Christoph Lutz
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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
Sunbelt 2015
Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
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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.
Sunbelt 2015
Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
Page 23
Thank you for your attention!
Sunbelt 2015
Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
Page 24
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
Sunbelt 2015
Connected for Success?
Christoph Lutz
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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