Are Mendeley's public groups effective aggregators of high-value papers? An analysis based on paper readerships

At present, Mendeley is the only academic social networking service that allows users to form interest groups. Sharing papers relevant to the group theme is one of the major activities of group members. In this study, we focused on Mendeley’s public groups, interested in their effectiveness in aggregating high-value academic papers. The value of the papers can be indicated with their readerships, a popular altmetric. Do the papers shared in groups have higher readerships than the ones that are not shared in groups? We obtained significant results for all of the 24 Mendeley disciplines examined. However, disciplinary differences exist: natural sciences and engineering present relatively higher levels of paper readership disparity than humanities and social sciences. Our findings suggest that exploring groups’ paper collections is a useful alternative method of information seeking, especially in natural sciences and engineering

Survey of the Providers of Electronic Publications Holding Contracts with Spanish University Libraries

21 p.This article describes a qualitative analysis of the electronic scientific contents distributed by the main providers of electronic publications subscribed in the Spanish academic libraries. The purpose of the analysis was to define the providers' global coverage, access architecture, search benefits, interface characteristics, functionalities and services of added value.S

An exploratory study of paper sharing in Mendeley's public groups

Mendeley website is a representative academic social networking service. We aim to study how papers are shared in the public groups in Mendeley. The results show that 61.58% of the public groups were extremely small in size, containing only one member (the creator of the group). When it comes to paper sharing, 26.88% of the groups had no papers added to them. Large groups did exist, i.e. the groups having more than 1,170 members. Groups with large amount of papers also existed, i.e. groups having as many as 90,458 papers. On the other hand, there are top groups with high averages of paper readership; interestingly, these groups had small numbers of members and papers, both below 20. From the results of this research, the truth of online ecology on Mendeley website could be revealed. Taking an insight into the current condition helps group owners activate their groups, and also helps operators of Mendeley make decisions on improving services. Those improvements would make Mendeley a more advanced social platform for scholarly knowledge communication.ye

Análisis de los contenidos distribuidos por proveedores de publicaciones electrónicas

p. 441-449Análisis de los contenidos cientí-ficos electrónicos distribuidos por Emerald, Kluwer Online, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, Taylor & Francis y Wiley InterScience. Para la evaluación se han establecido tres indicadores: cobertura horizontal, cobertura temática y cobertura vertical. La exploración se ha realizado a partir de las suscripciones mantenidas por la Universidad de León, con la excepción de Kluwer y Taylor & Francis, para cuyo análisis se ha empleado la consulta web gratuita. Se constata que los proveedores de contenidos electrónicos estudiados son multidisciplinares, si bien ofertan fundamentalmente contenidos de ciencias de la naturaleza, de la salud y de ciencias sociales.S

Global science discussed in local altmetrics: Weibo and its comparison with Twitter

Local altmetrics is currently an integral part of the altmetrics landscape. This paper aims to investigate the characteristics of microblog altmetrics of the Chinese microblog platform, Weibo, to shed light on cultural differences and draw attention to local altmetrics in developing countries. The analysis is based on 4.4 million records provided by Altmetric.com. Data collected are from March 2014 to July 2015. It is found that Weibo users discuss global science, more actively compared with several international altmetrics sources. Statistical results show strong evidence of the immediacy advantage of metrics based on Weibo as well as Twitter and the general altmetrics over citations. Distribution of Weibo altmetrics on the article level, source level and discipline level are highly skewed. Overall, compared with Twitter, Weibo altmetrics present similar distributions, with some minor variations. To better understand how and why Weibo users discuss global scientific articles, the top weiboed articles, sources and disciplines are identified and further explored. Our content analysis shows that the common motivation of scientific weibos is to disseminate or discuss the articles because they are interesting, surprising, academically useful or practically useful. Conclusion of articles is the most frequently mentioned element in scientific weibos. In addition, different from Twitter, Weibo users have a preference for traditional prestigious journals

Reports to the President

A compilation of annual reports for the 1999-2000 academic year, including a report from the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as reports from the academic and administrative units of the Institute. The reports outline the year's goals, accomplishments, honors and awards, and future plans