Investigation of the Presence of Surgery Researchers in ResearchGate Scientific Network: An Altmetrics Study

Introduction & Altmetrics studies could be done through the databases contents of LinkedIn, ResearchGate, Mendeley, Academia, uLike, and Impact Story. Since indexed documents’ printing in citation centers and then receiving them is time taking and in some spheres it takes years for a document to receive a citation, Scientometrics studies are time-dependent. Actually, time-dependency is less in Altmetrics and the performance and effectiveness of both researchers and their papers could be investigated based on this factor.
This is a Survey method that has been done through Altmetrics and with the help of Scientometrics. Firstly, data gathering has been done with the use of ISI database about researchers of surgery sphere. Subsequently, it has been investigated through analytical engine and then, the number of authors and documents have been gathered. After that, the name of researchers along with their official IDs in ResearchGate have been investigated and some factors like the number of documents, the Reads, full-text papers, the Followers, the Followings, and gathered data have been mined and with the help of SPSS software version 20, they have been analyzed.
Findings show that among the studied cases which are 327 out of 2062 in ISI, more than 86% could be fined in ResearchGate. Other findings show that there is a significant relationship between the publications in ResearchGate and the number of citations. Also other findings show that researchers whom papers are put in ResearchGate could receive more citations. Some findings show there is a significant relationship between being in ResearchGate scientific network and the number of citations in ISI. Besides, there is a significant relationship between the number researchers’ citations and the number of the Followers and the Followings. All in all, it offers that due to the findings of this study researchers from all spheres be in ResearchGate scientific network so that in addition to scientific cooperation, could heighten the number of scientific citations of our country.
Conclusions show that a low percent of researchers (nearly 14%) are not a member ResearchGate. These researchers should be aware that these kinds of networks have been formulated to accelerate the scientific relationships between people, creation process, and dissemination of knowledge. Reasons like asking for help from other researchers, hidden and obvious sharing of knowledge, the increase of research interests, job opportunities awareness, and groups’ possibility of discussions could be the notions to researchers’ preferences to the use of social medias.