Academic social networking sites like Academia.edu, ResearchGate, and Mendeley allow scholars to create profiles, build networks, participate in discussions, and engage in peer review. Some scholars use the peer review features on these sites for faster feedback compared to traditional journal review, which can take 12 months. However, critics argue that academic social networks lack transparency in peer review and are not a replacement for institutional repositories. Libraries can help address these issues by providing publishing and peer review services, increasing use of repositories, and developing open peer review plugins for repositories.

1. From ‘peer’ review
to page views:
Social networking
for academics

2. Hello!
My name is Lydia
You can find me at:
@liddylib

3. Agenda
◎ What is Academic Social Networking?
◎ Peer Review
◎ Implications for libraries
◎ Questions

4. Image

5. Social
Media
Loss of personal privacy
Hard to maintain work | life balance
No personal | professional boundaries
(Gruzd, 2012)

6. 1.
Academic Social
Networking

7. “
Social media sites designed
specifically for scholars
(Gruzd, 2012)

8. 51+ million users
Academia.edu
6+ million users
Mendeley
11+ million users
ResearchGate

9. Academia.edu

10. ResearchGate

11. Mendeley

12. Academic Social Networking Sites 101
◎ Create a research profile
◎ Build your network
◎ Create and/or join groups
◎ Participate on discussion boards
(Oh & Jeng, 2011; Krause 2012)
Image

13. Image

14. Academic social
networking sites
are not
institutional
repositories
(University of California, 2014)

15. 2.
Peer Review

16. Closed Peer Review
Author and/or reviewer identies not
revealed (single-blind or double-blind)
◎ Pros:
- Minimizes bias
◎ Cons:
- Lack of transparency
- Reviewers may give
unwarranted – feedback
- Reviewers may still be
able to identify the author
Types of Peer Review
(De Silva & Vance, 2017, pp. 81-82; Ali & Watson, 2016)
Image

17. Types of Peer Review cont’d
(De Silva & Vance, 2017, pp. 81-82; Ali & Watson, 2016)
Open Peer Review
Author and reviewer identities revealed
◎ Pros:
- Greater transparency
- Reviewers give + tactful &
constuctive feedback
- Better manuscript quality
- + Research dissemination
◎ Cons:
- Longer review time
- No evidence of quality improvement
- Reviewer participation
Image

18. Types of Peer Review cont’d
Post-Publication Peer Review
People provide feedback on already published
articles
◎ Pros:
- Wider group of people able to review
- Transparent
- Better manuscript quality
◎ Cons:
- Reviewers may give unwarranted –
feedback
- Irrelevant and unhelpful comments
(Ali & Watson, 2016)
Image

19. Academia.edu > Sessions
Image

20. 6,000+ /day
Whoa!
(Cutler, 2015)

21. ResearchGate > Open Review
Image

22. So ...
Why are scholars
using these peer
review features on
academic social
networking sites?

23. Image

24. “
“If you speak to academics, they will complain about the
publishing system...It can take 12 months to get the
peer review done...
An academic should be able to get work published in 24
hours that is already peer reviewed by two people.”
~ Richard Price, CEO, Academia.edu
(Cutler, 2015)

25. Image

26. Image

27. Image

28. 3.
Implications for
Libraries

29. What can we do?
◎ Be the go-to on all copyright related issues
Image

30. ◎ Bring publishing (& peer review) in-house
What can we do?
Image

31. ◎Increase use of institutional repositories
What can we do?

32. ◎ OPR plug-in for DSpace
repositories
◎ Includes published reviews,
disclosed identities, reviewer
reputation system
◎ Complete code on GitHub
(open license)
◎ More info here and here
Introducing...
Open Peer Review for repositories!
(Perakakis et al., 2017)
Image

33. Thanks!
Any questions?
You can find me at:
@liddylib
liddylib.wordpress.com
lthorne4@uwo.ca

34. References:
Ali, P. A., & Watson, R. (2016). Peer review and the publication process. Nursing Open, 3(4), 193-202.
Cutler, K. Academia.edu pushes a new kind of peer review for research with ‘Sessions.’ TechCrunch.
September 28, 2015. Retrieved May 27, 2017 from https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/28/academia/
De Silva, P. U., & Vance, C. (2017).Different models of peer review. In Scientific Scholarly Communication:
The Changing Landscape (pp.81-87). Springer.
Drafts and Feedback. Academia.edu. Retrieved May 27, 2017 from
http://support.academia.edu/customer/portal/articles/2080805-drafts-and-feedback
Greenhow, C. (2009). Social scholarship: Applying social networking technologies to research
practices. Knowledge Quest, 37(4), 42.
Gruzd, A. (2012). Non-academic and academic social networking sites for online scholarly communities.
Social media for academics: A practical guide, 21-37.
Howard, Jennifer. 2013. Posting your latest article? You might have to take it down. Chronicle of Higher
Education 60(16): A12.
Jeng, W., He, D., & Jiang, J. (2015). User participation in an academic social networking service: A survey of
open group users on Mendeley. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(5),
890-904.
Krause, J. (2012). Tracking reference with social media tools: Organizing what you’ve read or want to read. In
D. R. Neal (Ed.), Social media for academics: A practical guide (pp. 85-104). Oxford: Chandos Pub.
Lunden, I. (2013, April 08). Confirmed: Elsevier Has Bought Mendeley For $69M-$100M To Expand Its Open,
Social Education Data Efforts. Retrieved July 17, 2017, from https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/08/confirmed-
elsevier-has-bought-mendeley-for-69m-100m-to-expand-open-social-education-data-efforts/

35. References cont’d:
Masnick, M. (2016, May 17). Disappointing: Elsevier Buys Open Access Academic Pre-Publisher SSRN.
Retrieved from https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160517/13513134465/disappointing-elsevier-buys-open-
access-academic-pre-publisher-ssrn.shtml
Matthews, David. Do academic social networks share academics' interests? (2016, May 03). Retrieved July
17, 2017, from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/do-academic-social-networks-share-
academics-interests#survey-answer
Meyer, D. (2014, March 13). Academic social network ResearchGate aids debunking of stem cell study.
Retrieved June 15, 2017, from https://gigaom.com/2014/03/14/academic-social-network-researchgate-aids-
debunking-of-stem-cell-study/
Naik, Gautam. 2014. Hong Kong scientist casts doubt on stem-cell study; Professor says he is unable to
replicate findings of groundbreaking Japanese research. Wall Street Journal (Online), March 13, sec. World.
Oh, J. S., & Jeng, W. (2011, October). Groups in Academic Social Networking Services--An Exploration of
Their Potential as a Platform for Multi-disciplinary Collaboration. In Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust
(PASSAT) and 2011 IEEE Third Inernational Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom), 2011 IEEE Third
International Conference on (pp. 545-548). IEEE.
Ovadia, S. (2014). ResearchGate and Academia. edu: Academic social networks. Behavioral & Social
Sciences Librarian, 33(3), 165-169.
Perakakis, P., Ponsati-Obiols, A., Bernal, I., Sierra, C., Osman, N., Mosquera-de-Arancibia, C., & Lorenzo, E.
(2017). OPRM: Challenges to Including Open Peer Review in Open Access Repositories. Code4Lib Journal,
(35).

36. References cont’d:
Procter, R., Williams, R., Stewart, J., Poschen, M., Snee, H., Voss, A., & Asgari-Targhi, M. (2010). Adoption
and use of Web 2.0 in scholarly communications. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London
A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 368(1926), 4039-4056.
Introducing Open Review: A new way to evaluate research. ResearchGate. Retrieved May 26, 2017 from
https://www.researchgate.net/publicliterature.OpenReviewInfo.html
University of California. A social networking site is not an open access repository. (2016, February 23).
Retrieved June 16, 2017, fromhttp://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/12/a-social-networking-site-is-not-an-
open-access-repository/index.html
Weintraub, A. (2014). Social networks attempt to spark academic university collaborations (vol 30, pg 901,
2013). NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY, 32(3), 212-212.
Zaugg, H., West, R. E., Tateishi, I., & Randall, D. L. (2011). Mendeley: Creating communities of scholarly
inquiry through research collaboration. TechTrends, 55(1), 32-36.