Networked Learning Conference 2018

1. Exploring the geographies of
academic social network sites from a
socio-technical perspective:
An investigation of scientific literature in Spanish
Juliana E. Raffaghelli*, Stefania Manca**
*Open University of Catalonia, Spain, jraffaghelli@uoc.edu
**Institute of Educational Technology, CNR, Italy, stefania.manca@itd.cnr.it
NLC 2018, Zagreb, Croatia, 14-16 May 2018

2. Premise of the study
Academic social network sites like Academia.edu and
ResearchGate are networked socio-technical systems through
which:
To build a professional profile
To connect with colleagues
To share publications
To support scholarly communication among researchers of
multiple disciplines

3. Aims of the study
To map empirical Spanish-language research studies on the use of
ResearchGate and Academia.edu among scholarly communities, with
the purpose of verifying possible research gaps regarding shared
scholarly knowledge and networked learning supported by academic
social network sites.
There appears to be no existing ASNS in Spanish, and ResearchGate
and Academia.edu are the most popular academic sites for Spanish
research communities. The use of these sites is relatively under-
explored in the non-English language scientific literature.
This research here is an extension of a previous study of English-
language scientific literature which was carried out with the same
methods (Manca, 2018).

4. Theoretical background
Networked Participatory Scholarship is
a new form of scholarship that examines
the relationship between scholarly
practice and technology and explores
how online social networks invite
emergence of a new form of
scholarship.
(Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2012)
Social scholarship seeks to leverage
social media affordances (ie, promotion
of users, their interconnections and
user-generated content) and potential
values (i.e., knowledge as decentralized,
co-constructed, accessible and
connective) to evolve the ways in which
scholarship is accomplished in academia
(Greenhow & Gleason, 2014)
Design, implementation and use of information technologies are the
result of interactions and negotiations between technology, users
and organizational contexts (Huysman & Wulf, 2006).

5. Business model
Governance
Ownership
Technology
User/Usage
Content
Networking
Knowledge Sharing
Identity
Socio-economic layer
Techno-cultural layer
Networked-scholar layer
A multilevel framework based on a socio-technical perspective
Manca & Raffaghelli, 2017

6. Methods [1/2]
Search process
The keywords “ResearchGate” and
“Academia.edu” were applied separately
Sources:
1) Web of Science (TOPIC, Spanish)
2) 2) Scopus (TITLE-ABS-KEY, Spanish)
3) 3) EBSCO Academic journals,
Journals, Reviews (TX All Text,
Spanish)
4) In addition, three Spanish-
Portuguese scientific databases,
SCIELO, Dialnet and Redalyc, were
searched
No specific timespan was defined.
Inclusion and exclusion criteria
Peer-reviewed literature that
1) appears in Spanish-language academic
journals and conference proceedings
2) 2) specifically investigates the use of
ResearchGate and Academia.edu for
scholarly purposes
3) 3) reports empirical findings
4) 4) presents research questions and
documentation of all procedures.
Conceptual papers were excluded. Only
studies that included separate results for
ResearchGate or Academia.edu were
considered.

7. Methods [2/2]
The papers were analysed and coded by the two authors according to the following criteria:
 author(s) and year of publication
 academic social network site investigated (ResearchGate and/or Academia.edu)
 geographical area of authors’ affiliation
 research area
 research design and methods (quantitative method; qualitative method; mixed
approach)
 aim and theme of the study (general uptake; outreach; assessing impact; practices
and new modes of communication)
 framework level (socio-economic, techno-cultural, and networked-scholar, including
the elements at each level)
 main findings

8. Results [1/3]: Sample
 N/Units of study = Institutions [306/9] – Academics [80446/8] – Variables [70/1] – Documents
[700/1] – Scores=[3/1]
 ASNS investigated:
 RESEARCHGATE (12; 100%)
 RESEARCHGATE + ACADEMIA.EDU (9; 75%)
 No papers (0%) studied only Academia.edu
Year of publication
2014 4
2015 3
2016 5
Geographical provenance of
individual author affiliation
South America (Ecuador) 5
Spain
(Andalusia, Basque Country, Catalonia, Galicia)
11
Geographical coverage of studies
South America
(Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil)
6
Europe (Spain and Portugal) 6

9. Results [2/3]: Research Topic/Areas
Journal name N Main research topics/areas
El Profesional de la Información 4 Social Sciences (Information Science & Library Science),
Physical Sciences (Computer Sciences)
Hipertext.net 1 Social Sciences (Communication studies)
Opción 1 Social Sciences (Communication studies)
Revista Científica de Estrategias,
Tendencias e Innovación en Comunicación
1 Social Sciences (Communication studies)
Revista Gral de Informacion y
Documentacion
1 Social Sciences (Information Science & Library Science),
Physical Sciences (Computer Sciences)
Revista Latina de Comunicación Social 1 Social Sciences (Library Science, Communication Studies)
10th Iberian Conf. on Inf. Syst. and
Technologies, CISTI 2015
1 Social Sciences (Information Science & Library Science),
Physical Sciences (Computer Sciences)
II Cong. Int. de la Red Iberoamericana de
Narrativas Audiovisuales
1 Social Sciences (Communication studies)
VI Congreso Int. Latina de Com. Soc. 1 Social Sciences (Communication studies)

10. Results [3/3]: Themes within the three-level framework
Levels Socio-economic Techno-cultural
Networked-scholar
Sublevels
Ownership
Governance
Business
model
Technology
Usage
Content
Networking
Knowledge
sharing
Identity
General uptake - - - - 9 - 3 - -
Impact assessment - - - 1 1 - - - -
Practices and new modes of
communication
- - - - - - - - -
Outreach - - - - 1 - - - -
Note: the total number is more than 12 because some studies investigate more than one theme

11. Results: A synthesis
Research goals
 Presence + Followers at Academia.edu
or ResearchGate or both
 Ibero-American researchers’ visibility at
international level
 Research dissemination
 Reputation
 Use of ASNS for career advancement
Findings
 Scarse usage of ASNS (-50%)
 Unbalanced and narrow patterns of
following/followers
 Attempts to interpret data; no study
investigated empirically the motivations
of this low presence in ASNS
 Criticalities regarding the usage of ASNS
for scientific reputation assessment
 No analysis of learning concerned with
being and working as networked
scholars through ASNS

12. Discussion
Research goals
 ResearchGate attracts greater attention
in academic research communities
 Scholars from the humanities and social
sciences have a preference for
Academia.edu
 In most cases the studies describe a
phenomenon occurring in specific
regions or at the national level, with no
comparative strategies of analysis (e.g.,
adopting inferential statistics) other than
the identification of cases
 The evidence is not enough to
understand how to search for better
visibility and alternative metrics
Findings
 High concentration of studies on specific
areas centred on library and information
sciences and communication studies
within the field of social sciences
 Most of the papers adopted exploratory
approaches largely focused on the usage
of ASNS
 Very few papers on the networked
scholar level
 The pattern is consistent with the
international situation
 Lack of systematic approaches to faculty
development on networked/social
scholarship (including the adoption of
ASNS)

13. Conclusions:
On the geographies of Networked/Social Scholarship
in ASNS
A very small number of papers on ASNS use by Ibero-American researchers
 A gap in current research on ASNS participation and forms of engagement in specific
regional contexts
 Topics for future research:
 motivations for lurking
 scarce exploitation of technological affordances
 the impact that these new digital tools are having in the process of becoming and being a digital
scholar
 new methodologies (both quantitative and qualitative) to explore the constructs associated with
ASNS phenomenology
 Different ways of building a professional identity on the net, for instance investigating a possible
relationship between a scholar profile that is more versed on teaching than on researching and a
preference for generalist SNS compared to ASNS

14. Thank you! 
Juliana E. Raffaghelli
Email: jraffaghelli@uoc.edu
Twitter: @Julianar71
LinkedIn: http://it.linkedin.com/in/julianaraffaghelli
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Juliana_Elisa_Raffaghelli
Academia.edu: https://uoc.academia.edu/JulianaRaffaghelli
Stefania Manca
Email: stefania.manca@itd.cnr.it
Twitter: @StefaniaManca
LinkedIn: http://it.linkedin.com/in/stefaniamanca
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stefania_Manca/
Academia.edu: https://cnr-it.academia.edu/StefaniaManca