Investigating Science Researchers’ Presence on Academic Profile Websites: A case study of a Canadian research university

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Date
2020-09-24Author
Zhang, Li
Li, Chen
Type
ArticlePeer Reviewed Status
Peer ReviewedMetadata
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Researchers are increasingly using academic profile websites to organize and showcase their research outputs. Using the faculty at the science departments of the University of Saskatchewan, Canada as the study object, this research explores how science researchers used four academic profile websites: ResearchGate, Google Scholar Citations, Academia.edu, and ORCID. It was found that 78% of the researchers had established at least one academic profile, with ResearchGate being the most popular platform, Google Scholar Citations the second, followed at some distance by ORCID and Academia.edu. A high percentage of ORCID users did not list any of their publications, meaning their presence on ORCID was merely symbolic. We also found that the social interaction functions provided by ResearchGate were not well adopted. Findings from this study call for the improvement of the workflow of adding publications to ORCID profile.
Citation
Zhang, L., & Li, C. (2020). Investigating Science Researchers’ Presence on Academic Profile Websites: A Case Study of a Canadian Research University. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, (95). https://doi.org/10.29173/istl51Subject
academic profile website
ORCID
ResearchGate
Google Scholar Citations
academia.edu
Canada
Academic Social Network