Social reference managers and their users: A survey of demographics and ideologies

Altmetric indicators are increasingly present in the research landscape. Among this ecosystem of heterogeneous indicators, social reference managers have been proposed as indicators of broader use of scholarly work. However, little work has been done to understand the data underlying this indicator....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2018-07, Vol.13 (7), p.e0198033-e0198033
Main Authors: Chen, Pei-Ying, Hayes, Erica, Larivière, Vincent, Sugimoto, Cassidy R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic libraries
Bibliometrics
Browsing
Citations
Communications systems
Computer and Information Sciences
Demographics
Demography
Digital media
Documentation
Ecosystem management
Humanities
Indicators
Informatics
Information management software
Informetrics
Institutional repositories
Internet
Methods
Open access
People and Places
Platforms
Reinforcement
Research and Analysis Methods
Researchers
Scholarly communication
Scholars
Scientific communication
Scientometrics
Social networks
Social research
Social Sciences
Surveys
Technical communication
User statistics
Web 2.0
Web applications
Webometrics
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Summary:Altmetric indicators are increasingly present in the research landscape. Among this ecosystem of heterogeneous indicators, social reference managers have been proposed as indicators of broader use of scholarly work. However, little work has been done to understand the data underlying this indicator. The present work uses a large-scale survey to study the users of two prominent social reference managers-Mendeley and Zotero. The survey examines demographic characteristics, usage of the platforms, as well as attitudes towards key issues in scholarly communication, such as open access, peer review, privacy, and the reward system of science. Results show strong differences between platforms: Mendeley users are younger and more gender-balanced; Zotero users are more engaged in social media and more likely to come from the social sciences and humanities. Zotero users are more likely to use the platform's search functions and to organize their libraries, while Mendeley users are more likely to take advantage of some of the discovery and networking features-such as browsing papers and groups and connecting with other users. We discuss the implications of using metrics derived from these platforms as impact indicators.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0198033