How do scholars evaluate and promote research outputs? An NTU case study

Abstract

Academic scholars have begun to use diverse social media tools to disseminate and evaluate research outputs. Altmetrics which are indices based on social media, have emerged in recent years and have received attention from scholars from a variety of research areas. This case study aims to investigate how researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) promote their research outputs and how they conduct research evaluation. We conducted semi-structured interviews with eighteen NTU researchers. Results from the study show that NTU researchers still prefer traditional metrics such as citation count, journal impact factor (JIF) and h-index for their research evaluation. They find these metrics are essential determinants to identify the quality of a research paper. In terms of altmetrics, most NTU researchers interviewed are aware of them, but have not yet used them in research evaluation. Furthermore, we found that the main methods used to promote research outputs are attending academic conferences and publishing papers in journals. However, NTU researchers also embark on using social networking sites to disseminate new findings. The results of this study contribute to the previous literature to help understand how social media and altmetrics are influencing the traditional methods of promoting and evaluating research outputs in academia.