Presença e reputação online de pesquisadores em redes sociais acadêmicas: implicações para a comunicação científica | Researchers' social academic network profiles and online reputation

Abstract

This paper reports the partial results of an exploratory research in progress that aims to investigate the phenomenon of online presence and reputation of researchers in academic social networks and its implications for scholarly communication. It discusses the theoretical and methodological aspects of its construction and presents preliminary data about the online presence of 822 researchers from the Federal University of Alagoas in the main academic networks: AcademiaEdu, ResearchGate, Mendeley and Zotero. Our results demonstrate that 63.9% of the researchers have a profile in at least one of the academic networks considered. ResearchGate (48.2%) and AcademiaEdu (39.3%) are well ahead of Mendeley (11.7%) and Zotero (0.5%). There seems to be a predilection for Exact and Earth Sciences researchers by ResearchGate and Applied Social Sciences by the AcademiaEdu. With the growing number of online communication channels available, it is essential for researchers to manage their online presence and reputation by integrating them into their scholarly communication practice