标题：Social media and research: an assessment of the coverage of South African universities in ResearchGate, Web of Science and the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities
期刊名称：South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science
印刷版ISSN：0256-8861
电子版ISSN：2304-8263
出版年度：2015
卷号：81
期号：1
页码：8-20
DOI：10.7553/81-1-1540
出版社：Stellenbosch University
摘要：The emergence of social media, including social networking technologies, has had a profound impact on almost all human activities. Social media’s application in research is the most recent occurrence, as the technologies have gained prominence among researchers who regard social media as an avenue for not only strengthening their own networks, but also sharing their research. This article focuses on one of the social networking services for researchers, namely ResearchGate (RG), to assess the research visibility and impact of universities in South Africa. It also examines the correlation between the universities’ ResearchGate-based metrics and Web of Science (WoS) citation statistics on the one hand, and the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities’ (WRWU) ranking on the other. Results reveal that researchers in the top-ranking South African universities have quickly moved to embrace social media; there is a high correlation between RG and WoS in terms of their coverage of papers produced by universities in South Africa; there is also a high correlation between RG and WoS in terms of impact; and ranking of universities in RG, WoS and WRWU is similarly highly correlated. Further discussions, conclusions and recommendations are provided in the paper.
其他摘要：The emergence of social media, including social networking technologies, has had a profound impact on almost all human activities. Social media’s application in research is the most recent occurrence, as the technologies have gained prominence among researchers who regard social media as an avenue for not only strengthening their own networks, but also sharing their research. This article focuses on one of the social networking services for researchers, namely ResearchGate (RG), to assess the research visibility and impact of universities in South Africa. It also examines the correlation between the universities’ ResearchGate-based metrics and Web of Science (WoS) citation statistics on the one hand, and the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities’ (WRWU) ranking on the other. Results reveal that researchers in the top-ranking South African universities have quickly moved to embrace social media; there is a high correlation between RG and WoS in terms of their coverage of papers produced by universities in South Africa; there is also a high correlation between RG and WoS in terms of impact; and ranking of universities in RG, WoS and WRWU is similarly highly correlated. Further discussions, conclusions and recommendations are provided in the paper.
关键词：South Africa; altmetrics; webometrics; citation analysis; social media; research; universities; research impact
