Do ResearchGate Scores create ghost academic reputations?

Enrique Orduna-Malea, Alberto Martín-Martín, Mike Thelwall and Emilio Delgado López-Cózar ()
Additional contact information
Enrique Orduna-Malea: Universitat Politècnica de València
Alberto Martín-Martín: Universidad de Granada
Mike Thelwall: University of Wolverhampton
Emilio Delgado López-Cózar: Universidad de Granada

Scientometrics, 2017, vol. 112, issue 1, No 24, 443-460

Abstract: Abstract The academic social network site ResearchGate (RG) has its own indicator, RG Score, for its members. The high profile nature of the site means that the RG Score may be used for recruitment, promotion and other tasks for which researchers are evaluated. In response, this study investigates whether it is reasonable to employ the RG Score as evidence of scholarly reputation. For this, three different author samples were investigated. An outlier sample includes 104 authors with high values. A Nobel sample comprises 73 Nobel winners from Medicine and Physiology, Chemistry, Physics and Economics (from 1975 to 2015). A longitudinal sample includes weekly data on 4 authors with different RG Scores. The results suggest that high RG Scores are built primarily from activity related to asking and answering questions in the site. In particular, it seems impossible to get a high RG Score solely through publications. Within RG it is possible to distinguish between (passive) academics that interact little in the site and active platform users, who can get high RG Scores through engaging with others inside the site (questions, answers, social networks with influential researchers). Thus, RG Scores should not be mistaken for academic reputation indicators.

Keywords: Academic social networks; ResearchGate; Altmetrics; Research evaluation; Bibliometrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-017-2396-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:112:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2396-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-017-2396-9

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().