Investigating Alzahra University Faculty Members’ Activities in the Scientific Social Network of Researchgate and its Impact on the Scopus Citation Database and the Google Scholar Search Engine

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the presence and activity of Alzahra University faculty members in the ResearchGate social network and its impact on the Scopus citation database and Google Scholar search engine based on altemetrics indexes.This study is of applied rresearch, using survey type and from the perspective of scientometrics methodology with Altmetrics approach. The research community of this study included all faculty members of Alzahra University who are members of ResearchGate social network. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used for statistical analysis. Descriptive statistics included the frequency and mean of each of the indicators measured in the ResearchGate network, the Scopus Citation Database, and the Google Scholar search engine. Inferential statistics (Pearson correlation coefficient, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests) were used to assess the relationships and the presence or absence of differences between the variables studied.The findings showed that the highest attendance and activity belonged to the Faculty of Physics and Chemistry. The arts and literature colleges did not have a serious activity with an average GRG score of zero. There was also a significant positive correlation between Altmetric indexes in ResearchGate and GoogleScolar and Scopus citation indices.The results suggest that as researchers share knowledge and activity on the ResearchGate social network, the visibility of their scientific work increases, which in turn leads to an increase in citation indexes at Scopus and Google Scholar databases.

Keywords

• altemetrics
• al-zahra university
• faculty members
• research gate
• social networks