REM - Research on Education and Media Vol. 7, N. 2, Year 2015 ISSN: 2037-0830 – DOI: 10.1515/rem-2015-0010 Academic Social Networks: How the web is changing our way to make and communicate researches Giovanni Bonaiuti University of Cagliari, Italy, g.bonaiuti@unica.it, ORCID 0000-0003-0219-3603 Abstract Networking is not only essential for success in academia, but it should also be seen as a natural component of the scholarly profession. Research is typically not a purely individualistic enterprise. Academic social network sites give researchers the ability to publicise their research outputs and connect with each other. This work aims to investigate the use done by Italian scholars of 11/D2 scientific field. The picture presented shows a realistic insight into the Italian situation, although since the phenomenon is in rapid evolution results are not stable and generalizable. Keywords: Academic social network sites; Research strategies; Altmetrics; Scholars visibility Introduction Internet is changing the way we search, communicate, share information and connect with each other. It is no longer necessary to go out and spend time in library stacks; much of the information needed is available directly on our own desks. Information technology has sped up the time of publication and made it possible to access – almost in real time – papers and researches made all round the world. Furthermore, transition from the print to the electronic format has increased the number of scientific publications thanks to reduction in printing and distribution costs. Bornmann and Mutz (2014) suggest that the rate of global scientific output growth is closer to 8–9% each year, which equates to doubling every nine years. New models of scholarly communication have emerged that enhance and challenge the established systems (Mabe, 2010). Alongside the traditional publishers, today it has increased the number of universities that have their own ‘university press’ and a significant phenomenon is represented by open access worldwide movement that aim to give free availability to online reading materials according to the principles of open knowledge1. Moreover, Internet has facilitated publishing and archiving, plumping ‘self-publishing practice’ in which authors themselves make a copy of their works and ideas directly online; phenomenon that is boosted by the advent of social media, like blogs, Facebook or Twitter. One consequence of that could be seen in the increase of quotes and citations from Web resources also in humanities and social sciences papers (Yang, Qiu, & Xiong, 2010). Alongside opportunities, growth in scientific production has triggered difficulties in finding and selecting influential papers. No researcher can read everything that may be of potential interest for his or her work. A choice must be made and, conceivably, the choice is to select what is most visible or easily available. On the other side, for authors, it is even more difficult to stand out and enforce their work. In other words, researchers are today faced with two problems: being able to select the most important papers to be used as the basis for their researches and, simultaneously, finding out ways to increase the likelihood that his or her works are noticed. An answer given by information industries in 1 Detailed definitions of the Open Access initiative are to be found in the firsts meetings final declarations: Budapest 2002 (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), Bethesda 2003 (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm), Berlin 2003 (http://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration). Unauthenticated Download Date | 2/29/16 11:14 AM