3. 1. Introduction/ What & Why
• The scholarly communication landscape is changing
• Major changes in SC both formal and informal strands:
1) print to electronic 2) subscription models 3) OA & IR
4) ASNS [1–3].
• ASNS has brought a more pronounced change:
• Attracted the interests of many scholars and investors
• Signify their increasing importance in science and research
today and in the foreseeable future.
4. • Empirical evidences showed ASNs use is expanding [7–9].
• This may have resulted in the emergence of new usage pattern.
• However, the knowledge about ASNs and its use in SC sector is very scattered.
Therefore, this review study strives to fill the gap.
• What is the major theme of the studies in the field?
• What major research approaches are being used?
• What are the major research gaps?
1. Introduction/ What & Why …… cont’d
5. 2. Methods
Scoping review is
appropriate for mapping
an expansive topic and
to identify study gaps
[12,13]. we adopted
Trudel et.al [12] scoping
review framework.
Selection
Screening
Extraction
6. 2.1 Analysis
The data analysis approach is adopted from well-established approach in
scoping reviews [15,16].
1) Familiarization.
2) Theme identification.
3) indexing, charting, mapping and interpretation.
For the key word analysis, bibliographic data were extracted and kept in CSV
format. It was then translated into RIS format, then fed to VOSviewer
9. Theme I - Motivation and use of ASNs
• A total of 40 papers
• Descriptive studies (mostly)
• User’s motivations to join and use: 1) acquiring materials [20,55,102,103] 2)
sharing research works [46,61,103] 2) connecting with colleagues[55,102] 4)
knowing number of accruing citations [55,58] 5) receiving more citation [61]; 6)
collaborate with others [103]; 7) supporting openness [20]; 8) increasing one’s
institutions’ visibility [46]; and 9) self- promotion and ego-bolstering [55].
• Mainly used for consumption of information, slightly less for
sharing of information, and interaction with others
• Hence, implication for libraries
• ASNS are moving towards homogenization.
• Trust, Copyright policy, security issues, are major barriers in several
prior studies[20,24,102].
10. • 34 papers in Theme II.
• impact assessment [24], institutional Ranking [47], altmetrics [25],
measuring institutional research intensity [57].
• Two approaches: examining user’s act on different platforms whereas
second approach is a comparative approach: altmetrics and citation
analysis, etc.
• Criticized for not considering the relational dynamics and social
capital formation[26,27].
• Platform-specific dynamics is challenge.
• Lack of transparency is a major challenge to institutionalize metrices
computed based on the ASNs. Hence, there is no conclusive result on
what influence most these scores
Theme II – Impact Assessment
11. Theme III - ASNs Features and Services
• 14 studies
• User acceptance studies
• These studies investigated the feature and services of ResearchGate (RG)
[49,64,65,67,72,73], Academia.edu, Mendeley and Zotero [29,49,73], Others
[29,34,71,104].
• Changing with the dynamic and competitive business environment.
• Common features include: questions and answers, searching and browsing
facility, site navigation and session filters, output features, privacy settings
and text display, social tagging system and Recommendation systems.
• Question and Answer (Q & A) feature is praised in several studies as a feature
that helps to reinforce interactions among scholars .
• The studies showed that the improvements made to communication
interface earned a high degree of user acceptance
12. Theme IV Scholarly big data
• 28 studies under theme IV
• It’s a result of rapid growth in the ability of network platforms to gather and
transport huge quantities of academic data.
• Dimensions: recommendation systems, measuring future impact, Information
extraction, and data storage and protection
• Academic recommendation system: citation recommendation, collaborator
recommendation, and conference recommendation, etc.
• In recommendation system the main approaches are Collaborative Filtering,
Content-Based Filtering, Context-Awareness, trust, and social properties are
also used for improved recommendation accuracy[75].
• Future impact prediction is the another popular topic. It is argued that In
comparison with impact assessment, impact prediction is more relevant in
identifying projected funds, scientific awards and other decisions can be
allocated directly.
• proposed impact prediction models.
13. Conclusions
• Heterogeneity
• The thematic divergence suggests the field's multidisciplinary existence.
• ASNs' ever-expanding use has consequences for academic libraries, too.
• Four themes are proposed
• Academic and research institutions should draw up a roadmap which
maximizes their digital presence in ASNs.
• Most of the reviewed papers are conceptually situated between the formal
and informal networks of scholarly communication.
14. Future Directions…
• Examining the use of ASNs in driving polices of academic publishers,
universities, research institutions etc. e.g. self-archiving issues
• Study ASNs from macro, messo and micro perspectives.
• Citation impact and overall visibility scholars in developing countries.
• Comparative study of different disciplines, developed and developing
countries , information exchange scenarios such as face-to-face, open
interaction and open sharing.
• Open perspectives: openness access, open data and open science.
• Future studies in the library disciple may consider studying on how best utilize
institutional repository and ASNs simultaneously .
• Community structures of ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley etc. Thus,
the relational approaches to scientific impact assessment.
• Building more robust model for future impact prediction, extraction ..etc.
