Academic social networks metrics: an effective indicator for university performance?

Łukasz Wiechetek () and Zbigniew Pastuszak ()
Additional contact information
Łukasz Wiechetek: Maria Curie-Sklodowska-University
Zbigniew Pastuszak: Maria Curie-Sklodowska-University

Scientometrics, 2022, vol. 127, issue 3, No 10, 1401 pages

Abstract: Abstract Social networks have become popular among researchers and scientists. Specialized platforms for researchers offer many metrics and indicators which are used to evaluate various scientists and assess the strength of their impact. In this article the authors perform systematic comparison between the main university level ResearchGate (RG) metrics: total RG Score, number of publications, number of affiliated profiles and ARWU. A tool for acquiring the RG metrics of research units and a framework for calculating alternative university ranks was implemented and tested. As a point of reference the ranking system of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU, 2019) was used. The authors used a web scraping technique to acquire data. Data analysis was based on Spearman's rho and multiple linear regression (MLR). Ten additional ranks were developed and compared with the benchmark ranking. The k-means clustering method was used to identify the groups of ARWU universities. The research results show that the metrics provided by specialized social networks can be used for the assessment of universities, however, an in-depth evaluation requires a more advanced procedure and indicators to measure many areas of scholarly activity like research, integration, application, teaching, and co-creation. Clustering method showed also that the distance between the ARWU universities measured in values of RG metrics are bigger for the top of the ranking. The university authorities should encourage researchers to use specialized social networks, and train them how to do it, to promote not only their own achievements, but also to increase the impact and recognition of their respective research units. At the end of the article some limitations of the method used and some practical recommendations for the university authorities were formulated.

Keywords: ResearchGate; Altmetrics; Web scraping; Academic social network; University rank; University evaluation; Comparison; 00–02 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-021-04258-6 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:127:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-021-04258-6

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-021-04258-6

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 ().