A study of student and university teaching staff presence on ResearchGate and Academia.edu in Spain

Abstract

The main function of a Scientific Social Network (SSN) is to provide researchers and academics with a channel through which to promote their work and make their findings available to others. However, as of today, the majority of studies published on SSN sites (which have been assumed to be used almost exclusively by university teaching staff) provide only a partial picture of the overall SSN user community. Research reported in this article was conducted to test the hypothesis that although the majority of SSN profiles belong to university teaching staff, an ever-growing number of undergraduate, masters and doctoral students are actively using these platforms. An analysis of tallies of ResearchGate and Academia.edu profiles attributable to two distinct groups (university teaching staff on the one hand and undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students on the other) within five different Spanish academic communities indicates that university students at all levels now account for a significant percentage of the total ResearchGate and Academia.edu profiles created and maintained in Spain.