Beyond citations: Scholars visibility on the social Web

Traditionally, scholarly impact and visibility have been measured by counting publications and citations in the scholarly literature. However, increasingly scholars are also visible on the Web, establishing presences in a growing variety of social ecosystems. But how wide and established is this presence, and how do measures of social Web impact relate to their more traditional counterparts? To answer this, we sampled 57 presenters from the 2010 Leiden STI Conference, gathering publication and citations counts as well as data from the presenters’ Web “footprints.” We found Web presence widespread and diverse: 84% of scholars had homepages, 70% were on LinkedIn, 23% had public Google Scholar profiles, and 16% were on Twitter. For sampled scholars’ publications, social reference manager bookmarks were compared to Scopus and Web of Science citations; we found that Mendeley covers more than 80% of sampled articles, and that Mendeley bookmarks are significantly correlated (r=.45) to Scopus citation counts.

💡 Research Summary

The paper tackles the question of how scholars’ visibility on the social web relates to traditional measures of scholarly impact such as publication counts and citation numbers. To explore this, the authors selected a sample of 57 presenters from the 2010 Leiden STI (Science, Technology & Innovation) Conference—a group that is reasonably active in academic circles but not necessarily representative of all researchers. For each scholar they collected two sets of data. The first set consisted of conventional bibliometric indicators: the number of articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science and the corresponding citation counts. The second set captured the scholars’ “web footprints,” i.e., the presence of a personal homepage, a LinkedIn profile, a public Google Scholar profile, and a Twitter account. In addition, the authors examined the coverage of the scholars’ publications in the social reference manager Mendeley, counting how many of the sampled articles had at least one Mendeley bookmark.

The descriptive findings paint a picture of widespread but heterogeneous online presence. An overwhelming 84 % of the scholars maintained a personal homepage, indicating that most academics still value a self‑controlled web space for showcasing their work. LinkedIn was used by 70 % of the sample, reflecting the platform’s growing importance for professional networking and career development. By contrast, only 23 % had a public Google Scholar profile and a modest 16 % were active on Twitter, suggesting that many researchers either remain cautious about public self‑promotion on open social media or simply have not yet adopted these tools for scholarly communication.

The most analytically significant result concerns Mendeley. The authors found that more than 80 % of the sampled articles were bookmarked at least once in Mendeley, demonstrating that the platform has achieved broad penetration in the academic community. When they correlated the number of Mendeley bookmarks with Scopus citation counts, the Pearson correlation coefficient was r = 0.45 (p < 0.01). This moderate positive relationship indicates that articles that attract attention on Mendeley tend also to receive more traditional citations, but the correlation is far from perfect. In other words, Mendeley bookmarks capture a dimension of scholarly attention—early interest, readership, and perhaps informal diffusion—that overlaps with, yet is distinct from, the formal citation process.

Methodologically, the study combined automated data collection (web scraping, API calls) with manual verification to ensure data quality. The authors acknowledge several limitations. The sample size is modest, and the data are now more than a decade old; the social web landscape has evolved dramatically since 2010, with platforms such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and altmetric aggregators gaining prominence. Moreover, the analysis focuses exclusively on Mendeley, omitting other reference‑management or social‑sharing services that could provide complementary insights. Consequently, the findings should be interpreted as a snapshot of an early stage in the integration of social web metrics into scholarly evaluation.

In conclusion, the paper demonstrates that while a majority of scholars maintain a basic online presence, the depth of engagement with specific social platforms varies considerably. Mendeley emerges as a promising source of alternative impact data, showing a statistically significant, though moderate, association with traditional citation counts. The authors argue that future research should expand the sample, incorporate a broader array of social tools, and employ multivariate models to disentangle the multiple pathways through which scholarly work gains visibility and influence online. Ultimately, a more nuanced, hybrid evaluation framework that blends conventional bibliometrics with socially‑derived indicators will be essential for capturing the full spectrum of academic impact in the digital age.