Abstract

The evolution of the top academic social networks: Mendeley, Academia.edu, and ResearchGate is analyzed. This study tests the current health of these platforms and determines which growth stage they are in by tracking the annual number of new members and documents. In addition, the degree of transparency of these sites is discussed in relation to publicly available information about their services. The results show these platforms are reaching a change in cycle, where the increase rates are slowing down, decreasing the aggregation rate of documents and users.

Abstract

Scientific social networks (SSN) have been an important advance in the dissemination of knowledge in the scientific community. There are more and more researchers who agree on the need to join some SSN on account of the many advantages of visibility and impact they offer. This research paper studies the knowledge and use of SSN in the three Galician universities in 2017. Surveys of 552 professor/researchers from A Coruña, Santiago de Compostela and Vigo universities show that the knowledge and use of SSN have a growing trend, and that its management and usefulness assessment is positive, although their access frequency is still low.