Abstract
The main function of a Scientific Social Network (SSN) is to provide researchers and academics with a channel through which to promote their work and make their findings available to others. However, as of today, the majority of studies published on SSN sites (which have been assumed to be used almost exclusively by university teaching staff) provide only a partial picture of the overall SSN user community. Research reported in this article was conducted to test the hypothesis that although the majority of SSN profiles belong to university teaching staff, an ever-growing number of undergraduate, masters and doctoral students are actively using these platforms. An analysis of tallies of ResearchGate and Academia.edu profiles attributable to two distinct groups (university teaching staff on the one hand and undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students on the other) within five different Spanish academic communities indicates that university students at all levels now account for a significant percentage of the total ResearchGate and Academia.edu profiles created and maintained in Spain.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Campos Freire, F., & Direito Rebollal, S. (2015). La gestión de la visibilidad de la ciencia en las redes sociales digitales. In J. Rom, J. Cuenca & K. Zilles (Eds.), Negotiating (in)visibility: managing attention in the digital sphere. VIII International Conference on Communication and Reality, 117–124.
Campos Freire, F., Rivera Rogel, D., & Rodríguez, C. (2014). La presencia e impacto de las universidades de los países andinos en las redes sociales digitales. Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 69, 571–592. doi:10.4185/RLCS-2014-1025
González-Díaz, C., Iglesias-García, M., & Codina, L. (2015). Presencia de las universidades españolas en las redes sociales digitales científicas: caso de los estudios de comunicación. El profesional de la información, 24(5), 640–647. doi:10.3145/epi.2015.sep.12
Iglesias-García, M., González-Díaz, C., & Codina, L. (2015). Estudio de los perfiles de ResearGate y Academia.edu en las universidades españolas: el caso de los Departamentos de Comunicación Audiovisual y Publicidad. XESCOM I Simposio Internacional sobre Gestión de la Comunicación. Pontevedra (España).
Martorell, S., Canet, F., & Codina, L. (2014). Canalizar audiencias académicas: Propuesta de una red social para investigadores en estudios fílmicos. Hipertext. net 12.
ResearchGate (2015a). Celebrating 6 million members. Retrieved December 18, 2015 from https://www.researchgate.net
ResearchGate (2015b). 8 out of 8 million. Retrieved December 18, 2015 from https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/8-out-of-8-million
Acknowledgments
This research was carried out as a part of project “Active Audiences and Journalism: Interactivity, Web Integration and Findability of Journalistic Information CSO2012-39518-C04-02”, which is funded by the National Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Iglesias-García, M., González-Díaz, C., Codina, L. (2017). A Study of Student and University Teaching Staff Presence on ResearchGate and Academia.edu in Spain. In: Freire, F., Rúas Araújo, X., Martínez Fernández, V., García, X. (eds) Media and Metamedia Management. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 503. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46068-0_66
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46068-0_66
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-46066-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-46068-0
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)