Content uploaded by Amalia Mas-Bleda
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Amalia Mas-Bleda
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
European Highly Cited Scientists’ Presence in the Social Web
Abstract
The objective of this work is to identify if an influential group of researchers, highly cited scientists working at
European institutions, have different types of web presences: personal websites and research group websites as well as profiles in Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic Search (MAS), Mendeley, Academia.edu and LinkedIn.
... The core aim of this research was investigating whether and, to greatest extent, how interactive internet tools affect the modes of the scholarly practices, especially for as much as validation and dissemination practices are concerned. Relevant literature includes [1][2][3][4][5][7][8][9][10][11][12], based upon the results of surveys among researchers. ...
... The survey conducted by Calvi and Cassella [3] in April 2012 shows that "for research activities, most respondents (n = 8) use web 2.0 tools regularly". LinkedIn results to be "the most used social networking platform"; this outcome is shared by the much wider survey later conducted by Mas-Bleda et al. [5] -1517 highly-cited researchers who found the highest web 2.0 "web presence" for LinkedIn (18.4% in the physical sciences). Bar-Ilan et al. [2] notice a level of popularity for LinkedIn as high as 70%. ...
... The choice in favour of RG as a single SN is predominant among the two younger age tiers (∼21% in both cases); researchers between 45 and 54 years of age are the most numerous owners of LinkedIn single profiles (11.53%). Academia turns out to be a very small niche, which is in line with [5,7,12]. No researcher has chosen this tool as his/her single professional SN; small percentages of researchers, all aged between 45 and 55 years, have adopted it in combination either with LinkedIn (3.84%) or with both RG and LinkedIn (less than 2%). ...
In recent years, the influences of the main web 2.0 tools on the scholarly communication cycle have been at heart of significant surveys. Awareness and/or adoption rates of these tools were a relevant aspect of this subject.
In a very similar perspective, the present study addresses the Italian astrophysical research community. An online questionnaire was created in late September 2014 for the researchers working at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics. 117 astrophysicists have revealed their attitudes and behaviour towards some major professional social networks (ResearchGate, LinkedIn, Academia) as well as their opinions about aspects of the main validation practices. The results show that professional social networks have been adopted widely (∼66%). ResearchGate results to be the most popular tool, followed by LinkedIn. The respondents’ opinions about different types of peer-review show this community is only partly satisfied with single-blind peer-review; nevertheless, the set of scholarly values and communication practices remains rather traditional and social networks result to be used chiefly for enhancing research output dissemination and researchers’ availability on the web.
... Scholars in physics who use web 2.0 tools either frequently or occasionally are estimated at a 60% overallshows that " for research activities, most respondents (n = 8) use web 2.0 tools regularly " . LinkedIn results to be " the most used social networking platform " ; this outcome is shared by the much wider survey later conducted by Mas-Bleda et al. [5] – 1517 highly-cited researchers who found the highest web 2.0 " web presence " for LinkedIn (18.4% in the physical sciences). Bar-Ilan et al. [2] notice a level of popularity for LinkedIn as high as 70%. ...
... The choice in favour of RG as a single SN is predominant among the two younger age tiers (∼21% in both cases); researchers between 45 and 54 years of age are the most numerous owners of LinkedIn single profiles (11.53%). Academia turns out to be a very small niche, which is in line with [5,7,12]. No researcher has chosen this tool as his/her single professional SN; small percentages of researchers, all aged between 45 and 55 years, have adopted it in combination either with LinkedIn (3.84%) or with both RG and LinkedIn (less than 2%). ...
In recent years, the influences of the main web 2.0 tools on the scholarly communication cycle have been at heart of significant surveys. Awareness and/or adoption rates of these tools were a relevant aspect of this subject. In a very similar perspective, the present study addresses the Italian astrophysical research community. An online questionnaire was created in late September 2014 for the researchers working at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics. 117 astrophysicists have revealed their attitudes and behaviour towards some major professional social networks (ResearchGate, LinkedIn, Academia) as well as their opinions about aspects of the main validation practices. The results show that professional social networks have been adopted widely (∼66%). ResearchGate results to be the most popular tool, followed by LinkedIn. The respondents' opinions about different types of peer-review show this community is only partly satisfied with single-blind peer-review; nevertheless, the set of scholarly values and communication practices remains rather traditional and social networks result to be used chiefly for enhancing research output dissemination and researchers' availability on the web.
... Additionally, younger researchers are more adaptable to new research publications and might use them without reservation, while senior scholars depend more on core literature (Barnett and Fink, 2008). Moreover, Mendeley is a new tool and senior researchers seem to avoid using most social web services (Mas Bleda et al., 2013;Shehata. et al., 2017) and may choose to continue with their traditional practices. ...
Purpose
The rapid spread and severity of the coronavirus (COVID-19) virus have prompted a spate of scholarly research that deals with the pandemic. The purpose of this study is to measure and assess the coverage of COVID-19 research on social media and the engagement of readers with COVID-19 research on social media outlets.
Design/methodology/approach
An altmetric analysis was carried out in three phases. The first focused on retrieving all papers related to COVID-19. Phase two of the research aimed to measure the presence of the retrieved papers on social media using altmetric application programming interface (API). The third phase aimed to measure Mendeley readership categories using Mendeley API to extract data of readership from Mendeley for each paper.
Findings
The study suggests that while social media platforms do not give accurate measures of the impact as given by citations, they can be used to portray the social impact of the scholarly outputs and indicate the effectiveness of COVID-19 research. The results confirm a positive correlation between the number of citations to articles in databases such as Scopus and the number of views on social media sites such as Mendeley and Twitter. The results of the current study indicated that social media could serve as an indicator of the number of citations of scientific articles.
Research limitations/implications
This study’s limitation is that the studied articles’ altmetrics performance was examined using only one of the altmetrics data service providers (altmetrics database). Hence, future research should explore altmetrics on the topic using more than one platform. Another limitation of the current research is that it did not explore the academic social media role in spreading fake information as the scope was limited to scholarly outputs on social media. The practical contribution of the current research is that it informs scholars about the impact of social media platforms on the spread and visibility of COVID-19 research. Also, it can help researchers better understand the importance of published COVID-19 research using social media.
Originality/value
This paper provides insight into the impact of COVID-19 research on social media. The paper helps to provide an understanding of how people engage with health research using altmetrics scores, which can be used as indicators of research performance.
... As a more recent development, researchers have been increasingly adopting academic social networking Because of collaborative trends and the explosive growth in the number of publications, academic communication is undergoing a transformation from journals and conference presentations to web interaction (Liu, 2003;Mas-Bleda, Thelwall, Kousha, & Aguillo, 2014). As a kind of social networking service (SNS), academic social networking sites can not only be used for communication, and maintaining and developing professional relationships, but also for listing, storing and sharing individuals' publications, which highlight their academic characteristics (Bianchini, 2012;Mas-Bleda, Thelwall, Kousha, & Aguillo, 2013;Thelwall & Kousha, 2015b). They allow a certain responsiveness and informality that is not possible with the formal publishing process (Ovadia, 2014). ...
As one of the largest active academic social networking sites, ResearchGate (RG) has been utilized by scholars to share publications, seek collaborators, communicate work in progress, and build scholarly reputation. This study collects data from RG users from 61 U.S. research universities at different research activity levels, as categorized by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, to examine the impact of institutional differences on RG reputational metrics. The results confirm that RG is a research-oriented academic social networking site that closely and realistically mirrors the research activity level of institutions. With an increase in the research activity level of a university, its affiliated RG users tend to have higher RG scores, more publications and citations, and more profile views and followers, while the average number of reads of their publications and followees tend to be lower and fluctuant. In addition, RG users primarily follow others from institutions of a higher research activity level, forming virtual social networks centered around esteemed institutions. The study suggests academic social networks can serve as indicators in evaluation of research activities among research institutions, and such sites can be helpful and credible for acquiring resources, keeping informed about research, and promoting academic influence.
1 引言 作为 Web 2.0 时代最具影响力的基础应用之一， 社 交网站(Social Network Sites, SNS)近些年发展迅猛， 社 会大众也越来越依赖社交网站进行更为广泛和密切的 交流。Facebook 作为世界上最受欢迎的社交网络， 到 2016 年 1 月， 其月活跃用户数已达 17 亿， 日活跃用户数 保持在10亿左右。根据中国互联网络信息中心发布的 《2015 年中国社交应用用户行为研究报告》 ， 我国网民 对社交网站的使用率也高达77%。 科研人员作为网络用户中一个较为特殊的群体， 其信息行为一直备受研究界的关注。以往， 科研人员 一方面通过诸如 Arxiv 的预印本系统以及个人和机构 网站以公开科研成果并以此扩大学术影响力， 另一方 面也通过诸如Facebook、 LinkedIn 等社交网站进行广泛 地交流 [1, 2] 。这两个过程在某种程度上被分割开来 [3] ， 将 其予以整合存在必要性。 自 2008 年以来， 以 ResearchGate、 Academia 为代表 中国高影响力学者对学术社交网站的使用行为调查 *-以教育部长江学者为例 张耀坤 张维嘉 胡方丹 (南昌航空大学经济管理学院 江西 330063) 摘 要 文章调查了 2013 年、 2014 年长江学者在 ResearchGate、 Mendeley、 Academia 和学术圈这四个学术社交网 络上的基本数据。调查结果显示， 长江学者在各大学术社交网络上的总体注册率均未超过50%， 显示出使用情况 并不理想， 同时长江学者对学术社交网络持续使用仍有待提高， 但 ResearchGate 是个例外。研究结果也表明， 相 比其他学术社交网络， ResearchGate 能为长江学者提供更高的显示度。学科差异在使用较为活跃的学术社交网 络中也同样存在， 理学、 工学和医学比人文社会科学的科研人员活跃度更高。 关键词 学术社交网络 ResearchGate Mendeley 信息行为 Altmetrics Abstract This paper investigates the basic data of Changjiang Scholars in four ASNS: ResearchGate, Mendeley, Aca• demia and SoScholar. The survey results show that the Changjiang Scholars have not registered more than 50% of the ASNS, indicating that the overall usage is not satisfactory. Meanwhile, Changjiang Scholars' continuous use of ASNS re• mains to be improved with the exception of ResearchGate. The results also show that, compared to other academic so• cial networks, ResearchGate provide Changjiang scholars with a higher degree of presence. Disciplinary differences al• so exist, scholars from science, engineering and medicine disciplinary are more active than scholars from the humani• ties and social sciences.
Mendeley is a social network that allows researchers worldwide to discover, search and share resources and to cooperate with peer researchers. We can recognize a large amount of exhaustive information about who reads research articles and the contexts in which research articles are read by using data about people who register in Mendeley as readers of articles. The purpose of this paper is to explore different types of users of international Egyptian academic articles indexed in Scopus across four major fields: health sciences, life sciences, physical sciences and social sciences inside and outside academia. The aim is to determine the impact and use of international Egyptian academic articles in Mendeley compared to their citation impact and to explore whether there is any correlation between Mendeley readership counts and the citation indicators for these publications. Furthermore, this study analyses readers’ categories and discovers their country locations according to the data retrieved from Mendeley profiles. The data for this study are collected from the Scopus database. Webometric Analyst 2.0 is used to retrieve Mendeley readership statistics for all collected articles. This information will help in understanding how and to what extent Mendeley readership metrics are applicable in assessing the publications of Egyptian authors and in understanding the usage versus citation pattern and impact of Egyptian scientific outputs on global society. The results indicate that the majority of readers in all disciplines are Ph.D. students, master’s students, and post-graduate students; however, other types of academics are also represented. The findings also indicate that the highest correlations between citations and Mendeley readership counts are found for the types of users who frequently author academic papers, except for professors in some sub-disciplines. Regarding country locations, Egyptian international publications are mostly used by users from more than 100 countries worldwide. However, the majority in every field are from the USA. Overall, this study concludes that Egyptian researchers have great international influence on global society. The study suggests that Mendeley readership may reflect usage similarly to conventional citation impacts if the data are limited to readers who are also authors, without the delay of influence measured by citation indicators. Meanwhile, Mendeley data can disclose the invisible impact of research publications, such as educational value for non-author users inside academia or the impact of research papers on practice for users outside academia. Finally, Mendeley readership statistics can reflect the distribution of users in various countries and potential readers worldwide, identify the invisible impact of the research output per country on global society, and be used as a complementary and informative tool for citation databases in explicating the influence of scientific outputs.
Introduction
Academic social networking sites like ResearchGate (www.researchgate.net) (RG) are changing the trend of disseminating research and maximizes the collaboration between researchers by sharing publications, opinions and expertise. Nowadays, RG has more than nine million registered researchers (21st Oct 2015).
Objectives
Evaluate the presence of researchers from the Andalusian Ministry of Health in RG network
Identify the variability between centres of primary care and specialized care with respect to RGscore and the number of researchers with profile in RG
Methods
A descriptive cross-sectional analysis was performed from identification of all researchers with an affiliation to a centre belonging to the Andalusian Ministry of Health or with the affiliation Andalusian Health Service (SAS) in RG between 23th and 30th october 2015.
It was checked no profiles duplication with different affiliation for the same researcher and that they had an active profile with score superior to 0. For each researcher was collected RGscore and their Total Impact Factor, and was calculated the average RGscore for each centre, besides the number or researchers with RGscores between 30 and 40 (85th percentile of RG).
Segmented analysis was performed, based on top of centers (50 or more researchers enrolled), and level of care.
Results
Of the 68 centres belonging to the Andalusian Ministry of Health, 47 (69.1%) centres had at least one researcher with a profile in RG. In 27 (75%) of the 36 specialized care centres there is at least one researcher enrolled in RG, compared to 20 (62.5%) of the 32 primary care centres.
These centres have 1,286 registered researchers, with a total of RGscore of 20734.7, and an average score of 16.1 points. With RGscore between 30-40 there are 155 researchers, and 21 researchers with a RGscore of 40 or more.
The university and regional hospitals (9 centres), along with Costa del Sol Hospital add together 984 (76.5%) researchers, 141 (91%) researchers with a RGscore between 30-40, and 17 (81%) with a RGscore of 40 or more.
In the analysis of variation of number of researchers for each level of care, primary care centres have 74 (5.8%) researchers with 751.8 (3.6%) RGscore, 2 (1.3%) researchers with RGscore between 30-40, and no researcher with a RGscore of 40 or more.
Conclusions
There is a high number of registered researchers of Andalusian Ministry of Health in RG,
identifying a significant number of researchers (195) that are in the 85th percentile scores.
Another interesting fact is the concentration registered in a small hospital number, and the low participation of primary care researchers. The concentration in a few centres is in accordance to the weaknesses of the last SWOT analysis published in the Andalusian“2014/2018 Research and Innovation Strategy in Health”.
Introduction
Academic social networking sites like ResearchGate (www.researchgate.net) (RG) are changing the trend of disseminating research and maximizes the collaboration between researchers by sharing publications, opinions and expertise. Nowadays, RG has more than nine million registered researchers (21st Oct 2015).
Objectives
-Evaluate the presence of researchers from the Andalusian Ministry of Health in RG network
- Identify the variability between centres of primary care and specialized care with respect to RGscore and the number of researchers with profile in RG
Methods
A descriptive cross-sectional analysis was performed from identification of all researchers with an affiliation to a centre belonging to the Andalusian Ministry of Health or with the affiliation Andalusian Health Service (SAS) in RG between 23th and 30th october 2015.
It was checked no profiles duplication with different affiliation for the same researcher and that they had an active profile with score superior to 0. For each researcher was collected RGscore and their Total Impact Factor, and was calculated the average RGscore for each centre, besides the number or researchers with RGscores between 30 and 40 (85th percentile of RG).
Segmented analysis was performed, based on top of centers (50 or more researchers enrolled), and level of care.
Results
Of the 68 centres belonging to the Andalusian Ministry of Health, 47 (69.1%) centres had at least one researcher with a profile in RG. In 27 (75%) of the 36 specialized care centres there is at least one researcher enrolled in RG, compared to 20 (62.5%) of the 32 primary care centres.
These centres have 1,286 registered researchers, with a total of RGscore of 20734.7, and an average score of 16.1 points. With RGscore between 30-40 there are 155 researchers, and 21 researchers with a RGscore of 40 or more.
The university and regional hospitals (9 centres), along with Costa del Sol Hospital add together 984 (76.5%) researchers, 141 (91%) researchers with a RGscore between 30-40, and 17 (81%) with a RGscore of 40 or more.
In the analysis of variation of number of researchers for each level of care, primary care centres have 74 (5.8%) researchers with 751.8 (3.6%) RGscore, 2 (1.3%) researchers with RGscore between 30-40, and no researcher with a RGscore of 40 or more.
Conclusions
There is a high number of registered researchers of Andalusian Ministry of Health in RG,
identifying a significant number of researchers (195) that are in the 85th percentile scores.
Another interesting fact is the concentration registered in a small hospital number, and the low participation of primary care researchers. The concentration in a few centres is in accordance to the weaknesses of the last SWOT analysis published in the Andalusian“2014/2018 Research and Innovation Strategy in Health”.
This study aims to examine how the follower–followee ratio determines user characteristics on the academic social networking site ResearchGate (RG) and to examine institutional participation differences among research universities. It uses the follower–followee ratio as the categorization measure for grouping 87,083 RG users from 61 U.S. universities, in three research activity levels as determined by The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (2016). As a result of analysis, individuals in the sample were further differentiated into three categories or user groups based on the follower–followee ratio: Information Source users (37.98%), Friend users (54.21%), and Information Seeker users (7.81%). These three user categories differ in overall scholarly reputation, popularity, and academic influence with a decrease from Information Source users to Information Seeker users. This study also reveals the current status of institutional participation in terms of activity level, and differences in user composition at three research activity levels. While the proportion of the Information Seeker users remains roughly the same across research activity levels, as the scholarly reputation of a university increases, there is an increase in the proportion of Friend users. The results help promote a deeper understanding of the follower–followee relationship among users on an academic social networking site, as well as the institutional user participation status. Future research should consider an international comparison between nations and disciplines. Application of this approach to other academic social networking sites would enhance general understanding of academic social networking sites and their users.
The paper reports on a major international questionnaire survey that investigated the use of social media in the research workflow. The topic is the second to emerge from the Charleston Observatory. The study of more than 2000 researchers shows that social media impact on all points of the research lifecycle, from identifying research opportunities to disseminating findings at the end. The three most popular social media tools in a research setting were those for collaborative authoring, conferencing, and scheduling meetings. The most popular brands used tend to be mainstream anchor technologies or 'household brands', like Twitter and Skype. Age is a poor predictor of social media use in a research context and scientists avail themselves most of social media. Journals, conference proceedings and edited books remain the core traditional means of disseminating research, with institutional repositories highly valued as well, but social media has become an important complementary channel for disseminating and discovering research.
Purpose
– This study aims to explore the link creating behaviour of European highly cited scientists based upon their online lists of publications and their institutional personal websites.
Design/methodology/approach
– A total of 1,525 highly cited scientists working at European institutions were first identified. Outlinks from their online lists of publications and their personal websites pointing to a pre-defined collection of popular academic websites and file types were then gathered by a personal web crawler.
Findings
– Perhaps surprisingly, a larger proportion of social scientists provided at least one outlink compared to the other disciplines investigated. By far the most linked-to file type was PDF and the most linked-to type of target website was scholarly databases, especially the Digital Object Identifier website. Health science and life science researchers mainly linked to scholarly databases, while scientists from engineering, hard sciences and social sciences linked to a wider range of target websites. Both book sites and social network sites were rarely linked to, especially the former. Hence, whilst successful researchers frequently use the Web to point to online copies of their articles, there are major disciplinary and other differences in how they do this.
Originality/value
– This is the first study to analyse the outlinking patterns of highly cited researchers' institutional web presences in order to identify which web resources they use to provide access to their publications.
The web is not only the main scholarly communication tool but also an important source of additional information about the individual researchers, their scientific and academic activities and their formally and informally published results. The aim of this study is to investigate whether successful scientists use their personal websites to disseminate their work and career details and to know which specific contents are provided on those sites, in order to check if they could be used in research evaluation. The presence of the highly cited researchers working at European institutions were analysed, a group clearly biased towards senior male researchers working in large countries (United Kingdom and Germany). Results show that about two thirds of them have a personal website, specially the scientists from Denmark, Israel and the United Kingdom. The most frequent disciplines in those websites are economics, mathematics, computer sciences and space sciences, which probably reflect the success of open access subject repositories like RepEc, Arxiv or CiteSeerX. Other pieces of information analysed from the websites include personal and contact data, past experience and description of expertise, current activities and lists of the author’s scientific papers. Indicators derived from most of these items can be used for developing a portfolio with evaluation purposes, but the overall availability of them in the population analysed is not representative enough by now for achieving that objective. Reasons for that insufficient coverage and suggestions for improvement are discussed.
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.
This paper presents the results of a survey aimed at gauging the potential acceptance of a collaborative and Web 2.0 inspired scholarly communication sector. While this sector has seen the birth of a multitude of innovative initiatives, there is still little empirical evidence of the acceptance of such initiatives by researchers. We received 349 completed questionnaires from researchers of many different disciplines. The results of the survey show that there is a strong positive attitude towards Web 2.0 and open publishing approaches. However, the major challenge still resides in combining free dissemination of results with robust and reliable quality control mechanisms.Highlights► We explore the opinions of researchers on Web 2.0 for scientific knowledge. ► 345 questionnaires were completed by researchers from many different disciplines. ► Results show dissatisfaction with current copyright and dissemination policies. ► There is room to adopt methods to combine free dissemination and quality control. ► Authors recommend policy intervention to change the mainstream publishing practices.
In a time of rapidly increasing available information finding relevant information with appropriate effort becomes an increasingly difficult task. The Internet is more and more becoming the first place to search for scientific information because of ease of search and retrieval and the huge amount of information available. Especially in fast-paced scientific areas like information technologies (IT) the Internet also provides the fastest way to provide recent information for a big audience. Providing articles online for free positively influences their distribution and thus furthers the scientific career of individuals. This paper presents our department's online document management system Paperserver. We outline differences in user behavior and functionality compared to the predecessor system and by evaluating the document type distribution and comparing it to results taken from CiteSeer, we try to draw conclusions on availability, relevance and actuality of online scientific articles.
The present analysis looks at how scientists use the Internet for informal scientific communication. It investigates the relationship between several explanatory variables and Internet use in a cross-section of scientists from seven European countries and five academic disciplines (astronomy, chemistry, computer science, economics, and psychology). The analysis confirmed some of the results of previous U.S.-based analyses. In particular, it corroborated a positive relationship between research productivity and Internet use. The relationship was found to be nonlinear, with very productive (nonproductive) scientists using the Internet less (more) than would be expected according to their productivity. Also, being involved in collaborative R&D and having large networks of collaborators is associated with increased Internet use. In contrast to older studies, the analysis did not find any equalizing effect whereby higher Internet use rates help to overcome the problems of potentially disadvantaged researchers. Obviously, everybody who wants to stay at the forefront of research and keep up-to-date with developments in their research fields has to use the Internet.
In recent years, a considerable body of Webometric research has used hyperlinks to generate indicators for the impact of Web documents and the organizations that created them. The relationship between this Web impact and other, offline impact indicators has been explored for entire universities, departments, countries, and scientific journals, but not yet for individual scientists—an important omission. The present research closes this gap by investigating factors that may influence the Web impact (i.e., inlink counts) of scientists' personal homepages. Data concerning 456 scientists from five scientific disciplines in six European countries were analyzed, showing that both homepage content and personal and institutional characteristics of the homepage owners had significant relationships with inlink counts. A multivariate statistical analysis confirmed that full-text articles are the most linked-to content in homepages. At the individual homepage level, hyperlinks are related to several offline characteristics. Notable differences regarding total inlinks to scientists' homepages exist between the scientific disciplines and the countries in the sample. There also are both gender and age effects: fewer external inlinks (i.e., links from other Web domains) to the homepages of female and of older scientists. There is only a weak relationship between a scientist's recognition and homepage inlinks and, surprisingly, no relationship between research productivity and inlink counts. Contrary to expectations, the size of collaboration networks is negatively related to hyperlink counts. Some of the relationships between hyperlinks to homepages and the properties of their owners can be explained by the content that the homepage owners put on their homepage and their level of Internet use; however, the findings about productivity and collaborations do not seem to have a simple, intuitive explanation. Overall, the results emphasize the complexity of the phenomenon of Web linking, when analyzed at the level of individual pages.
The quality and credibility of Internet resources has been a concern in scholarly communication. This paper reports a quantitative
analysis of the use of Internet resources in journal articles and addresses the concerns for the use of Internet resources
scholarly journals articles. We collected the references listed in 35,698 articles from 14 journals published during 1996
to 2005, which resulted in 1,000,724 citations. The citation data was divided into two groups: traditional citations and Web
citations, and examined based on frequencies of occurrences by domain and type of Web citation sources. The findings included:
(1) The number of Web citations in the journals investigated had been increasing steadily, though the quantity was too small
to draw an inclusive conclusion on the data about their impact on scientific research; (2) A great disparity existed among
different disciplines in terms of using information on the Web. Applied disciplines and interdisciplinary sciences tended
to cite more information on the Web, while classical and experimental disciplines cited little of Web information; (3) The
frequency of citations was related to the reputation of the author or the institution issuing the information, and not to
the domain or webpage types; and (4) The researchers seemed to lack confidence in Internet resources, and Web information
was not as frequently cited as reported in some publications before. The paper also discusses the need for developing a guideline
system to evaluate Web resources regarding their authority and quality that lies in the core of credibility of Web information.
The present analysis looks at how scientists use the Internet for informal scientific communication. It investigates the relationship between several explanatory variables and Internet use in a cross-section of scientists from seven European countries and five academic disciplines (astronomy, chemistry, computer science, economics, and psychology). The analysis confirmed some of the results of previous U.S.-based analyses. In particular, it corroborated a positive relationship between research productivity and Internet use. The relationship was found to be nonlinear, with very productive (nonproductive) scientists using the Internet less (more) than would be expected according to their productivity. Also, being involved in collaborative R&D and having large networks of collaborators is associated with increased Internet use. In contrast to older studies, the analysis did not find any equalizing effect whereby higher Internet use rates help to overcome the problems of potentially disadvantaged researchers. Obviously, everybody who wants to stay at the forefront of research and keep upto-date with developments in their research fields has to use the Internet.