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Co-follower metric on academic-social media ResearchGate: similarities between Derek de Solla Price Memorial Medal winners

• Published: 23 August 2023
• Volume 128 , pages 5545–5569, ( 2023 )

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• Maria Cláudia Cabrini Grácio   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8003-0386 1 ,
• Natalia Rodrigues Delbianco 1 ,
• Fábio Sampaio Rosas 2 &
• Antonio Perianes-Rodríguez 3  

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From the perspective of the ResearchGate community, the study examines what are the relationships among researchers described by the co-followers metric. The study used the ResearchGate accounts of 18 Solla Price medalists. From each researcher's account, the following indicators were retrieved: number of readings, number of recommendations, number of research items, number of followers, list of specialties, and the comprehensive list of followers' names. Pearson's correlation coefficients were calculated between number of followers and the other three indicators. Subsequently, a symmetric matrix was built with the number of common followers among the researchers, and then normalized by Salton's Cosine. Ucinet Software was employed to construct the relationship network among the Solla Price Medal winners with the MDS layout being adopted further for visualizing the proximity between them. The study found that the number of followers is a legitimate metric of academic reputation and impact on ResearchGate. The majority of followers of the analyzed Solla Price Medalists seem to choose to follow these researchers not because of their Solla Price Medal, but because of followers' familiarity with the researchers' scientific work and publications prior to joining ResearchGate. In addition, the clusters of medalists, according to their common followers, indicate that the groupings are strongly due to co-authorship in high-impact publications between the medalist researchers as well as their different specialties and the journals used to disseminate the results of their research projects. It is concluded that, instead of social proximities, the co-follower relational metric objectively represents theoretical-methodological proximities between researchers, as perceived by the ResearchGate community, providing a clear image of the role played by the researchers analyzed in this environment.

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Acknowledgements

This research is funded by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) Grant No. 310785/2021-9. The doctoral dissertation of N.R.D. is funded by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) Grant No. 88887.687378/2022-00.

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Maria Cláudia Cabrini Grácio & Natalia Rodrigues Delbianco

São Paulo State University, Rod. Cmte João Ribeiro de Barros, Dracena, 17900-000, Brazil

Fábio Sampaio Rosas

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, C/ Madrid 128, 28903, Getafe, Spain

Antonio Perianes-Rodríguez

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Grácio, M.C.C., Delbianco, N.R., Rosas, F.S. et al. Co-follower metric on academic-social media ResearchGate: similarities between Derek de Solla Price Memorial Medal winners. Scientometrics 128 , 5545–5569 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04793-4

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Received : 17 August 2022

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• Social media in Academia (5): ResearchGate

Provides recommendations on how to get the most out of ResearchGate

Anne-Wil Harzing - Mon 9 Mar 2020 07:30 (updated Sat 15 Apr 2023 07:31)

<<< GO TO PART 4: Social media in Academia (4): LinkedIn

Your Google Scholar Profile is essentialy the publication list of your CV, covering all your publications and their citations. LinkedIn is the “go to” place for finding out more about your career history and allows you to easily share your professional news in various formats. ResearchGate has become the “go to” place to find full-text versions of your papers , especially for academics in the Social Sciences. Humanities scholars often use Academia.edu, a very similar service, whereas academics in the Sciences and Engineering frequently use repositories such as arXiv.org. Increasingly though academics from all disciplines are starting to use ResearchGate.

Unless you have your own website and upload full-text pre-publication version of your papers there, ResearchGate is thus the "go to" place to upload full-text versions of your papers, something which is crucial to disseminating your work more widely. Even though I do have papers on my own website under  Online papers I still upload them on ResearchGate as well as I know this is where many academics are looking for them.

Setting up your profile

Creating a profile is really simple:

• Go to researchgate.net
• Click  Join for free or connect with Facebook or LinkedIn
• Select which type of researcher you are
• Enter your name, institutional email address, and choose a password
• To finish creating your account, you will need to click the link in the activation email you receive.
• Flesh out your account by adding a bio and other CV type items under Overview and Info Make sure you keep it future proof so you don’t need to constantly update these.

Adding publications and full-text versions

ResearchGate has an extensive publication database drawn from a variety of sources. Once you have created a profile, it will search whether it already has publications in their database under your name. It will generally notify you that it has found publication matches for you; review them and accept inclusion if they are yours. If any of your publications are missing you can add them manually. Once this is done add full text versions for as many of your publications as possible. The full-text availability will be clearly shown on your profile.

If the article is available Open Access [i.e. accessible for everyone, even for individuals and universities without a subscription] on the publisher’s website you can upload that version. Otherwise, simply add the “pre-publication version” of your article. This is the version that was accepted by the journal, but contains your own formatting. However, the pre-publication version doesn’t have to be the unattractive “double-spaced, all tables and figures at the back” version. You can make it look as nice as you want, as long as it is your own version. Finally, you can pick up to five research items as featured items. This is a really good way to feature articles you are particularly proud of or articles that are recent. This is one of my five, an article introducing a fairer new research metric , which I felt had received less attention than it deserved.

Creating projects

Make it easier for people to understand what you are working on by grouping your published articles into projects. In these projects you can also add data, power point slides or other resources such as videos. This is especially useful if you have a coherent body of research on a particular topic that you want to showcase or have a new project that you want to bring under people’s attention. I have not been very effective in using this feature as I already have defined six research programs on my personal website and I just can't be bothered doing something similar on ResearchGate. So I have only half-heartedly created a few projects, literally in 5-10 minutes each. However, it can be a very useful feature and one of my Middlesex colleagues - Lilian Miles - has used it very effectively in summarzing her funded work in Malaysia .

ResearchGate as a source of professional/academic information

• You can use ResearchGate to request full-text versions of papers if they are not yet online and others can do the same for your papers. This is especially useful for items that you are not allowed to post publicly on ResearchGate. You can store a full-text of these items privately and then just send them to individuals asking for a copy.
• Just like on Linkedin/Twitter, you can follow people on ResearchGate. This might be useful if you are starting out in a particular field and would like to keep up to date with key authors.
• Just like Linkedin/Twitter, ResearchGate also has a time-line. This tells you whenever someone you follow or one of your co-authors is "doing something" on ResearchGate, whether that's adding content, commenting on a paper, asking a question, following a project or a question, or anything else really. However, your time-line also seems to include some people who are only linked to you through citations. For me, this is just complete and utter information overload, most of it irrelevant. However, it might be quite useful if are just starting out and not yet connected to many people.
• You can ask and respond to questions on ResearchGate. However, typically I find the level of these Q&A exchanges to be rather low. You are better off going to  Academia Stack Exchange or ask your colleagues.

Metrics: evidence your impact

ResearchGate provides an extensive set of metrics under the Stats and Scores tabs. Unfortunately, ResearchGate is not transparent about how these are calculated and regularly changes both the metrics included and their calculations. They are therefore not quite as reproducible as metrics from publishers or data sources such as the Web of Science , Scopus , Microsoft Academic and Google Scholar . However, they might give you some interesting insights into the popularity of your entire body of work as well as your individual articles.

Under the Scores tab you see your own very own ResearchGate score, the calculation of which unfortunately is rather obscure. You also get a h-index based on ResearchGate citations as well. Under the Stats tab, there is no end to what you can find out about how your publications are doing. As you can see below, you can review the development of reads and citations of your body of work and individual articles over time.

Every week you can view a report with the number of new reads, recommendations and citations, as wel as see which individuals are downloading or reading your work [omitted in the screenshot below for privacy reasons] and the countries and institutions in which your work is read most. You also get a list of your most-read articles every week, as well as a list of your "achievements" such as "this paper has achieved 200 reads, that paper has achieved 20 citations". If you click on the "view more" link under Research Interest you are shown a new window in which you can see how you compare to other ResearchGate users. The sheer amount of these metrics is quite overwhelming and I think the granularity of them easily leads you to overestimate their level of accuracy and importance. However, there is no denying that some of these metrics can be useful if you are making your case for tenure and promotion.

Adjust your notifications settings

Just like for LinkedIn I suggest you adjust your preferences to ensure you are not overwhelmed with emails. Click on Account/Settings and just spend five minutes to uncheck nearly all of your notification settings. If you don’t, you might well get several emails a day. You will be told if academics engage in any way with any of your papers or your projects and all the metrics and achievements listed above will be emailed to you on a regular basis. As one of my co-authors said: "ResearchGate's default settings alert you whenever someone in your networks farts".

Not only does this create serious email clutter [do I really need to know that one or other of my 133 papers has "achieved" 5 or 10 or 20 citations or 100 or 200 reads?], it also creates an unhealthy obsession with metrics. All of this might be a bit of fun if you are just starting out, have only one or two papers, and are truly excited with every read or citation. Weren't we all? However, I wouldn't recommend it for established researchers, especially if you want to keep your sanity and get any work done.

GO TO PART 6: Social media in Academia (6): Twitter >>>

Videos: ResearchGate, Blogging, LinkedIn and Twitter

Related blogposts.

• Social Media in Academia (1): Introduction
• Social Media in Academia (2): Comparing the options
• Social Media in Academia (3): Google Scholar Profiles
• Social Media in Academia (4): LinkedIn
• Social Media in Academia (6): Twitter
• Social media in Academia (7): Blogging
• Social Media in Academia (8): Putting it all together
• Fostering research impact through social media
• How to ensure your paper achieves the impact it deserves?

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Social Media in Neurosurgery: Using ResearchGate

Affiliations.

• 1 Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.
• 2 Department of Neurosurgery, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA.
• 3 Michigan State University College of Communication Arts and Sciences, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.
• 4 University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Department of Neurosurgery, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].
• 5 University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Department of Neurosurgery, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
• PMID: 30965167
• DOI: 10.1016/j.wneu.2019.04.007

Background: Neurosurgery is a unique field, which would benefit greatly from increased global collaboration, furthering research efforts. ResearchGate is a social media platform geared toward scientists and researchers.

Objective: This study evaluated the use of ResearchGate for neurosurgical research collaboration and compared the ResearchGate score with more classic bibliometrics. ResearchGate is a unifying social platform that can strengthen global research collaboration (e.g., data sharing) in the neurosurgery community.

Methods: Publicly available metrics on 3718 neurosurgery clinical faculty and residents in Canada and the United States were obtained from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons Web site. The following metrics were collected: program name, clinician name, sex, attending (yes or no), resident (yes or no), postgraduate year (if resident), and ResearchGate profile (yes or no). ResearchGate score and its components and h index excluding self-citations were collected. Fellows were not included.

Results: Of the 3718 total individuals included, 1338 (36.0%) were present on ResearchGate, comprising 181 women (13.5%) and 1157 men (86.5%). Women and men were present in similar proportions (33.8% of women and 36.3% of men) (χ 2 [1, N = 3718] = 1.26; P = 0.26). More faculty were present on ResearchGate than residents (62.4%) (χ 2 [1, N = 3718] = 11.42; P = 0.001). A strong positive monotonic correlation between h index and ResearchGate score was shown (r s [1292] = 0.93; P < 0.0005). More than 400 international departments were determined.

Conclusions: ResearchGate may be a useful platform to increase neurosurgical networking and research collaboration. Its novel bibliometrics are strongly correlated with more classic platforms.

Keywords: Bibliometrics; Neurosurgery; Research collaboration; ResearchGate; Social media.

Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

• Biomedical Research / methods*
• Biomedical Research / trends
• Information Dissemination / methods*
• Neurosurgeons / trends
• Neurosurgery / methods*
• Neurosurgery / trends
• Neurosurgical Procedures / methods
• Neurosurgical Procedures / trends
• Social Media* / trends

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The use of social media and its impact for research

Social media is an omnipresent part of everyday life. It provides users with an easy way to engage and connect with others without meeting face-to-face. This form of communication provides a lot of opportunity for companies and individuals to reach a massive audience. What is the purpose of social media, and how does it tie into science? Well, you see, it all depends on who you know and how active your social media presence is. Is there a benefit for sharing research across social media? The benefits of social media stem from active participation and the generation of new attractive content from an individual. Research is about producing new information, and social media offers unique opportunities to present new content.

Full Article

The Use of Social Media and its Impact for Research

Jessica Rogers

Keywords: Social media; Research; Engagement

Contact information: BioResources Process Editor, Department of Forest Biomaterials, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 8005, Raleigh, NC 27606, USA; e-mail: [email protected]

What is Social Media?

In today’s world social media is an ever-present facet of life that surrounds us. Almost every advertisement, whether television, radio, magazine, movie preview, podcast, newspaper, or elsewhere, will mention its social media presence in some way. ‘You can like us on Facebook, Check us out on Instagram,’ or perhaps ‘Watch our channel on YouTube’, are just some of the hooks that companies will provide to further build their brand and increase their visibility. As of January 2019, there were around 7.7 billion people in the world, of which 3.397 billion were active social media users (Smith 2019). Moreover, there are almost one million new users to some form of social media each day, or a new user every 10 seconds; 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube alone every minute (Smith 2019). To summarize, if you have found yourself boycotting the idea of social media, I hate to break it to you but it is here to stay.

The Underlying Purpose of Social Media

For those who do not know, a key theme of social media is ‘engagement’. Have you ever reached out to a company on their social media for any reason? The different social media outlets are simply interactive pathways on the internet that companies and businesses use to form relationships and network with others without leaving one’s desk. As a scientist, it is essential to attend conferences, give lectures, and lead panel discussions to network with others about common science interests. Today, there are an endless amount of resources accessible on the internet at your fingertips that allow you to do the same thing. Twitter first surfaced as a news and social networking site in which users post content and interact with each other through messages called ‘tweets’. The use of hashtags (a type of metadata tag) across all social media platforms allows people to search for certain interests and see all content related to that particular hashtag. This is a quick way to find and engage with people through common interests. Of course, you should still actively participate in your community by attending conventions and conferences, but if you truly seek to engage with more people, then you should not simply ignore the outlet of social media until you try it, as it can connect you with an even larger audience. Think of it this way, your lecture or discussion is most likely already being recorded, so what will you do with that recording?

Social media has a clear and direct purpose for businesses that sell a product or service and are searching for ways to advertise their brand. Of course, there other ways to use social media. Most people use social media to be, well, social, and communicate with family, former colleagues, or keep in touch with old classmates. The idea of a technological way of staying in touch with people is how Facebook was created. Facebook adds 500,000 new accounts each day, which equates to 6 new profiles every second (Smith 2019). So who exactly is in your friends list on Facebook? Who is subscribing to your channel on YouTube? Who is retweeting your tweets? If you want to broaden your impact beyond your discipline, you need to have a strong base of connections in your network.

The average person has 5.54 social media accounts (Smith 2019). Of those accounts, whatever one’s goal is, is it being projected across multiple platforms? Exactly who is engaged? These are all important questions that deal with your potential reach as an individual. The bottom line is if you seek community engagement in what you are doing, you must first be active in that particular community.

Social Media and Research

Now let us change course and focus on a different path of social media, that is where scientists use it to promote their research. The same rule applies. While all social media outlets have the potential for massive reach, it all comes back to a matter of whom you connect with or engage. However, the fast-paced and live aspect of social media can drive skeptical researchers not to publish, but successful reactions and quick responses can increase a researcher’s credibility. Research is about producing new information, and social media offers unique opportunities to present new content.

As a scientist, once you publish your research, you want to share it with as many colleagues and people so that they may read your novel findings. You want to share your hard work with many individuals. Almost all researchers send an email to their colleagues and individuals within their institution, which essentially is the first step in promoting their work. What if you took that one-step further and reached out to the scientific community on social media? You probably already have some form of a social media account and possibly one that relates to the scientific community; ResearchGate is a popular academic social media outlet. ResearchGate is a website that provides scientists with a forum to share and discuss their research as well as find collaborators. If you share your research on your personal account, then the only people that will see it are those whom you connect with. However, if you were active on different community or special interest pages that relate to your area of study and participate in regular discussions with other researchers on these sites, then you may find yourself having a much wider reach. Again, it all stems back to what you wish to accomplish with your research.

What Does that Mean for you?

Before getting started, you must ask yourself what exactly you want to gain from social media. If an increased reach is primarily what you seek, then you must be active in multiple communities related to your specialty. You already stay current on industry news and new research on your own, which is what others may be doing when they discover your research. However, if engagement and stimulated discussions are what you seek, then your active presence is required. Participating and driving discussions and posting content is what ultimately increases your visibility. Sharing and reposting others’ work, and being an active member on social media brings more attention to your profile and can enhance your reputation. A good place to start is with the professional social networking site LinkedIn that allows you to make connections with people based on job interests.

You can always go the old fashioned, tried and true route and send an email about your research, but how many new people reach out to you regarding your work? Maybe next time, try posting your research on a couple of industry pages, tag a few people in the community, and see if you make any new connections or spark any intriguing conversations. Because social media allows you to interact instantly with people across the globe, you may be surprised at who or how many people engage with you.

References Cited

Jaring, P., and Bäck, A. (2017). “How researchers use social media to promote their research and network with industry,”  Technology Information Management Review  7(8), 32-39. DOI: 10.22215/timreview/1098

Smith, K. (2019). “123 Amazing social media statistics and facts,”  brandwatch , (https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/amazing-social-media-statistics-and-facts/), Accessed 26 March 2019.

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Is the academic social networking site ResearchGate still relevant?

A recent deal with the publisher mdpi is leading some users to delete their accounts, by dalmeet singh chawla, special to c&en, january 19, 2024 | a version of this story appeared in volume 102, issue 2.

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Sorry, but I do not support @MDPIOpenAccess or its publishing model. I will no longer maintain an account on @ResearchGate . — Dan Sloan (@SloanEvoLab) November 20, 2023

Rubén Laplaza uses the academic social networking site ResearchGate to keep up with the scientific literature in his field. “For me, ResearchGate has, for years, been a useful tool,” says Laplaza, a computational chemist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL). It helps him manage the deluge of published papers—including preprints, which are posted online before being peer-reviewed.

Founded in 2008, ResearchGate has millions of global users, most of them researchers. The site’s early funders included Bill Gates, Goldman Sachs, and the Wellcome Trust. It launched as a social platform where academics could discuss papers, but it ended up not being widely used for that purpose.

Instead, researchers use ResearchGate to follow one another, receive automatic alerts when colleagues publish papers, and share their papers legally with other academics with a single click.

Related: Malaysia won’t pay for researchers to publish in certain journals

Recently, however, ResearchGate has faced challenges. Those include backlash from the academic community for a deal it made with the Swiss publisher Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI). And ResearchGate has settled lawsuits in Germany and the US with the publishing giant Elsevier and the American Chemical Society, which publishes C&EN. Some scientists are questioning whether the site is still relevant to them.

Alerts from ResearchGate can be useful, according to Laplaza, as long as colleagues in the same field are using the platform and actively posting their papers on it. Other methods of tracking relevant literature include setting up alerts on Google Scholar profiles, following relevant publications and academics on social media, and attending conferences.

Did they make you that offer in a predatory scam email? — ⌬Nessa Carson (@SuperScienceGrl) November 19, 2023

At the same time, “we are also all spammed to death already with all sorts of invitations,” Laplaza says. “So it’s a matter of trying to balance sources of information that are valuable, especially if they can be curated through people, but at the same time trying to prevent the use of bandwidth for useless communications.”

Some researchers who have similar concerns say the agreement with MDPI has driven them to delete their ResearchGate accounts. As part of the deal, roughly 210,000 papers from 10 journals published by MDPI will have an enhanced presence on the platform.

“These journals benefit from increased brand visibility and prominence across the ResearchGate network,” Giulia Stefenelli, chair of MDPI’s scientific board, says in an email, noting that the participating 10 titles will have dedicated journal homepages on ResearchGate. “Furthermore, authors gain automatic addition of their articles to their ResearchGate publication records, offering insights into their work’s impact through readership and citation data,” she says.

What a disastrous liaison. I always thought Researchgate was reputable... — Tim Jennerjahn (@JennerjahnTim) November 18, 2023

Stefenelli says MDPI is paying ResearchGate an undisclosed sum each year for the journal homepages. ResearchGate did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

MDPI has grown rapidly in the past few years to become one of the largest scholarly publishers in the world. But its journals have come under scrutiny by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Norwegian Scientific Publication Register; both institutions allege lack of rigor in published papers. In 2018, editors at one MDPI journal resigned en masse , claiming that they felt pressured to publish mediocre papers.

Most MDPI papers are parts of special issues, which are collections of papers on a certain topic that are typically handled by guest editors. Many papers published in such issues are invited. But bibliographic analyses show that special issues have lower rejection rates and shorter processing times for articles. That’s what prompted the Swiss National Science Foundation to stop funding papers published in special issues starting in February 2024.

After the deal with MDPI was announced, academics expressed worries on social media that the agreement will only add to the flood of mediocre papers and pointless alerts. “As a frequent user of ResearchGate, I’m disappointed by your choice to prioritize MDPI journals over many society journals,” Çağatay Tavşanoğlu, an ecologist at Hacettepe University, wrote last year on X, formerly Twitter. “I, like many others, may soon delete my account unless this unwise decision is reconsidered.”

“This is so so so disappointing and sad!” Fengxiu Zhang, who studies climate action, disaster resilience, and technology in government at George Mason University, exclaimed on X. “This is a terrible, terrible idea,” Martin E. Andresen, an economist at the University of Oslo, commented on the platform. “Deleted my account.”

Fredrik Jutfelt, an animal physiologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, is also considering deleting this account. He recalls joining ResearchGate in its early days to easily share his research and discover other academics’ work—in part by keeping an eye on who’s citing his work. “It still has value,” he says. “I don’t see a good alternative.”

Laplaza, noting that there haven’t been many changes yet, is keeping his profile for now. “I just don’t want to be spammed,” he says. “If the price to pay to get a marginally useful notification about a paper that you may or may not care about is having to see or deal with a number of spam notifications, then maybe it’s just not worth it.” He says he will continue to use the site until the downsides outweigh the benefits.

I enjoy research gate but I am not sure this is a great move. Will there be way to block this enhanced presence of MDPI...not a fan. — Dave Boucher (@dave_boucher) November 18, 2023

Not sure I understand in the first place how it is in any way a good move for science to feature some journals over others, for money. And then you made it MDPI. Bye-bye ResearchGate. — Nanna Bjarnholt (@NBjarnholt) November 19, 2023

Lucie Büchi, a crop ecologist at the University of Greenwich, is also unhappy with the MDPI deal but is keeping her account. “It is still a very useful tool when you don’t have access to some journals because of paywalls,” she says. Büchi thinks ResearchGate will continue to exist and serve an important purpose.

Mark Austin Hanson, a molecular biologist and geneticist at the University of Exeter, says he thinks the concerns about the MDPI deal are overblown. The furor comes from a vocal minority on social media, he adds, noting that ResearchGate has also recently partnered with other publishers, including Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, the American Institute of Physics, and Wiley.

Those deals ensure that final versions of open-access studies published in certain journals are available immediately on ResearchGate, thus boosting their visibility and readership. “I don’t think there’s any issue with it whatsoever,” Hanson says.

Jutfelt is not convinced. “We’ve looked at ResearchGate as an objective distributor of science and a platform where everyone is equal,” he says. “The main concern is publishers paying for visibility and paying for citations.”

He says his institution has discouraged its staff from publishing in some MDPI journals after they were added to Norway’s so-called level X . Researchers receive no government acknowledgment for publishing in journals on the list, which the Norwegian Scientific Index created in 2021 to highlight potentially predatory publications. What’s more, most MDPI journals don’t meet the criteria to be included in approved journal lists in Finland and Denmark.

Related: What will chemists do if Twitter goes down?

In addition to negative responses to the MDPI agreement, ResearchGate has run into problems with other academic publishers. To settle copyright infringement lawsuits with Elsevier and ACS, ResearchGate adopted a technology that automatically checks if papers being uploaded to the site comply with publisher copyright.

“While you can see why [ResearchGate] is cozying up with publishers, this could work against them. They become less cool, social, innovative and a bit old-fashioned in an open world,” says David Nicholas, director of Ciber Research, a British firm that studies how people behave in digital environments. “Our research shows that [ResearchGate’s] success is waning among young researchers as they find other places to go,” like LinkedIn and WhatsApp, he adds.

Hanson plans to continue using ResearchGate, however. He argues that organizations like the Committee on Publication Ethics and databases like the Web of Science, Scopus, and the Directory of Open Access Journals should decide what constitutes legitimate science and whether or not that includes MDPI papers.

“ResearchGate is a social media site that hosts content others engage with,” Hanson says. “It’s not ResearchGate’s role to independently judge the value of the work itself, nor should it be.”

MDPI’s Stefenelli agrees. She points out that her firm advocates for evaluating journals through tools such as Think. Check. Submit. and databases including the Web of Science, Scopus, and the Directory of Open Access Journals. “As at December 2023, 26 Nobel laureates have contributed to more than 75 articles across 25 MDPI journals,” she says. “We encourage researchers to review our journals, editorial board, and published content to help further inform their opinions.”

Related: Online platform allows researchers to claim credit for grant peer review

Dalmeet Singh Chawla is a freelance science journalist based in London.

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Social Media Use and Its Connection to Mental Health: A Systematic Review

Fazida karim.

1 Psychology, California Institute of Behavioral Neurosciences and Psychology, Fairfield, USA

2 Business & Management, University Sultan Zainal Abidin, Terengganu, MYS

Azeezat A Oyewande

3 Family Medicine, California Institute of Behavioral Neurosciences and Psychology, Fairfield, USA

4 Family Medicine, Lagos State Health Service Commission/Alimosho General Hospital, Lagos, NGA

Lamis F Abdalla

5 Internal Medicine, California Institute of Behavioral Neurosciences and Psychology, Fairfield, USA

Reem Chaudhry Ehsanullah

Safeera khan.

Social media are responsible for aggravating mental health problems. This systematic study summarizes the effects of social network usage on mental health. Fifty papers were shortlisted from google scholar databases, and after the application of various inclusion and exclusion criteria, 16 papers were chosen and all papers were evaluated for quality. Eight papers were cross-sectional studies, three were longitudinal studies, two were qualitative studies, and others were systematic reviews. Findings were classified into two outcomes of mental health: anxiety and depression. Social media activity such as time spent to have a positive effect on the mental health domain. However, due to the cross-sectional design and methodological limitations of sampling, there are considerable differences. The structure of social media influences on mental health needs to be further analyzed through qualitative research and vertical cohort studies.

Introduction and background

Human beings are social creatures that require the companionship of others to make progress in life. Thus, being socially connected with other people can relieve stress, anxiety, and sadness, but lack of social connection can pose serious risks to mental health [ 1 ].

Social media

Social media has recently become part of people's daily activities; many of them spend hours each day on Messenger, Instagram, Facebook, and other popular social media. Thus, many researchers and scholars study the impact of social media and applications on various aspects of people’s lives [ 2 ]. Moreover, the number of social media users worldwide in 2019 is 3.484 billion, up 9% year-on-year [ 3 - 5 ]. A statistic in Figure  1  shows the gender distribution of social media audiences worldwide as of January 2020, sorted by platform. It was found that only 38% of Twitter users were male but 61% were using Snapchat. In contrast, females were more likely to use LinkedIn and Facebook. There is no denying that social media has now become an important part of many people's lives. Social media has many positive and enjoyable benefits, but it can also lead to mental health problems. Previous research found that age did not have an effect but gender did; females were much more likely to experience mental health than males [ 6 , 7 ].

Impact on mental health

Mental health is defined as a state of well-being in which people understand their abilities, solve everyday life problems, work well, and make a significant contribution to the lives of their communities [ 8 ]. There is debated presently going on regarding the benefits and negative impacts of social media on mental health [ 9 , 10 ]. Social networking is a crucial element in protecting our mental health. Both the quantity and quality of social relationships affect mental health, health behavior, physical health, and mortality risk [ 9 ]. The Displaced Behavior Theory may help explain why social media shows a connection with mental health. According to the theory, people who spend more time in sedentary behaviors such as social media use have less time for face-to-face social interaction, both of which have been proven to be protective against mental disorders [ 11 , 12 ]. On the other hand, social theories found how social media use affects mental health by influencing how people view, maintain, and interact with their social network [ 13 ]. A number of studies have been conducted on the impacts of social media, and it has been indicated that the prolonged use of social media platforms such as Facebook may be related to negative signs and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress [ 10 - 15 ]. Furthermore, social media can create a lot of pressure to create the stereotype that others want to see and also being as popular as others.

The need for a systematic review

Systematic studies can quantitatively and qualitatively identify, aggregate, and evaluate all accessible data to generate a warm and accurate response to the research questions involved [ 4 ]. In addition, many existing systematic studies related to mental health studies have been conducted worldwide. However, only a limited number of studies are integrated with social media and conducted in the context of social science because the available literature heavily focused on medical science [ 6 ]. Because social media is a relatively new phenomenon, the potential links between their use and mental health have not been widely investigated.

This paper attempt to systematically review all the relevant literature with the aim of filling the gap by examining social media impact on mental health, which is sedentary behavior, which, if in excess, raises the risk of health problems [ 7 , 9 , 12 ]. This study is important because it provides information on the extent of the focus of peer review literature, which can assist the researchers in delivering a prospect with the aim of understanding the future attention related to climate change strategies that require scholarly attention. This study is very useful because it provides information on the extent to which peer review literature can assist researchers in presenting prospects with a view to understanding future concerns related to mental health strategies that require scientific attention. The development of the current systematic review is based on the main research question: how does social media affect mental health?

Research strategy

The research was conducted to identify studies analyzing the role of social media on mental health. Google Scholar was used as our main database to find the relevant articles. Keywords that were used for the search were: (1) “social media”, (2) “mental health”, (3) “social media” AND “mental health”, (4) “social networking” AND “mental health”, and (5) “social networking” OR “social media” AND “mental health” (Table  1 ).

Out of the results in Table  1 , a total of 50 articles relevant to the research question were selected. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, duplicate papers were removed, and, finally, a total of 28 articles were selected for review (Figure  2 ).

PRISMA, Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Peer-reviewed, full-text research papers from the past five years were included in the review. All selected articles were in English language and any non-peer-reviewed and duplicate papers were excluded from finally selected articles.

Of the 16 selected research papers, there were a research focus on adults, gender, and preadolescents [ 10 - 19 ]. In the design, there were qualitative and quantitative studies [ 15 , 16 ]. There were three systematic reviews and one thematic analysis that explored the better or worse of using social media among adolescents [ 20 - 23 ]. In addition, eight were cross-sectional studies and only three were longitudinal studies [ 24 - 29 ].The meta-analyses included studies published beyond the last five years in this population. Table  2  presents a selection of studies from the review.

IGU, internet gaming disorder; PSMU, problematic social media use

This study has attempted to systematically analyze the existing literature on the effect of social media use on mental health. Although the results of the study were not completely consistent, this review found a general association between social media use and mental health issues. Although there is positive evidence for a link between social media and mental health, the opposite has been reported.

For example, a previous study found no relationship between the amount of time spent on social media and depression or between social media-related activities, such as the number of online friends and the number of “selfies”, and depression [ 29 ]. Similarly, Neira and Barber found that while higher investment in social media (e.g. active social media use) predicted adolescents’ depressive symptoms, no relationship was found between the frequency of social media use and depressed mood [ 28 ].

In the 16 studies, anxiety and depression were the most commonly measured outcome. The prominent risk factors for anxiety and depression emerging from this study comprised time spent, activity, and addiction to social media. In today's world, anxiety is one of the basic mental health problems. People liked and commented on their uploaded photos and videos. In today's age, everyone is immune to the social media context. Some teens experience anxiety from social media related to fear of loss, which causes teens to try to respond and check all their friends' messages and messages on a regular basis.

On the contrary, depression is one of the unintended significances of unnecessary use of social media. In detail, depression is limited not only to Facebooks but also to other social networking sites, which causes psychological problems. A new study found that individuals who are involved in social media, games, texts, mobile phones, etc. are more likely to experience depression.

The previous study found a 70% increase in self-reported depressive symptoms among the group using social media. The other social media influence that causes depression is sexual fun [ 12 ]. The intimacy fun happens when social media promotes putting on a facade that highlights the fun and excitement but does not tell us much about where we are struggling in our daily lives at a deeper level [ 28 ]. Another study revealed that depression and time spent on Facebook by adolescents are positively correlated [ 22 ]. More importantly, symptoms of major depression have been found among the individuals who spent most of their time in online activities and performing image management on social networking sites [ 14 ].

Another study assessed gender differences in associations between social media use and mental health. Females were found to be more addicted to social media as compared with males [ 26 ]. Passive activity in social media use such as reading posts is more strongly associated with depression than doing active use like making posts [ 23 ]. Other important findings of this review suggest that other factors such as interpersonal trust and family functioning may have a greater influence on the symptoms of depression than the frequency of social media use [ 28 , 29 ].

Limitation and suggestion

The limitations and suggestions were identified by the evidence involved in the study and review process. Previously, 7 of the 16 studies were cross-sectional and slightly failed to determine the causal relationship between the variables of interest. Given the evidence from cross-sectional studies, it is not possible to conclude that the use of social networks causes mental health problems. Only three longitudinal studies examined the causal relationship between social media and mental health, which is hard to examine if the mental health problem appeared more pronounced in those who use social media more compared with those who use it less or do not use at all [ 19 , 20 , 24 ]. Next, despite the fact that the proposed relationship between social media and mental health is complex, a few studies investigated mediating factors that may contribute or exacerbate this relationship. Further investigations are required to clarify the underlying factors that help examine why social media has a negative impact on some peoples’ mental health, whereas it has no or positive effect on others’ mental health.

Conclusions

Social media is a new study that is rapidly growing and gaining popularity. Thus, there are many unexplored and unexpected constructive answers associated with it. Lately, studies have found that using social media platforms can have a detrimental effect on the psychological health of its users. However, the extent to which the use of social media impacts the public is yet to be determined. This systematic review has found that social media envy can affect the level of anxiety and depression in individuals. In addition, other potential causes of anxiety and depression have been identified, which require further exploration.

The importance of such findings is to facilitate further research on social media and mental health. In addition, the information obtained from this study can be helpful not only to medical professionals but also to social science research. The findings of this study suggest that potential causal factors from social media can be considered when cooperating with patients who have been diagnosed with anxiety or depression. Also, if the results from this study were used to explore more relationships with another construct, this could potentially enhance the findings to reduce anxiety and depression rates and prevent suicide rates from occurring.

The content published in Cureus is the result of clinical experience and/or research by independent individuals or organizations. Cureus is not responsible for the scientific accuracy or reliability of data or conclusions published herein. All content published within Cureus is intended only for educational, research and reference purposes. Additionally, articles published within Cureus should not be deemed a suitable substitute for the advice of a qualified health care professional. Do not disregard or avoid professional medical advice due to content published within Cureus.

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

To read this content please select one of the options below:

Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, use of social media by social science academics for scholarly communication.

Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication

ISSN : 2514-9342

Article publication date: 5 October 2018

Issue publication date: 18 October 2018

The purpose of this study is to investigate social science academics’ use of social media for scholarly communication at Kuwait University.

Design/methodology/approach

Phase One data were collected through web-based and paper responses to questionnaires. Faculty members, teachers and teaching assistants in the social science faculty were invited to participate. Forty-six of the 100 invited participants responded. Phase Two comprised interviews with 10 respondents.

Social connection platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, received the highest mean score for use (M = 4.35), followed by mobile apps, such as WhatsApp (M = 4.24), and multimedia platforms such as Instagram and YouTube (M = 3.59). Moderate to low use was recorded for academic social media. ResearchGate recorded the highest use (M = 3.09), followed by academia.edu (M = 2.93). “Keeping in touch” was the most frequently reported activity (M = 4.04). Two-thirds of respondents used social media for informal scholarly communication with people they knew. “Lack of university encouragement” received the highest score (M = 3.54) as a factor inhibiting use and almost half the respondents (47.2 per cent) cited “lack of time” as a barrier.

Practical implications

Improving academics’ understanding of the uses of social media might increase their visibility and improve their research and other scholarly activities. Study findings support the development of relevant training programs that include a focus on integrating social media into research activities and the dissemination of research findings.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the limited literature on this topic in Kuwait and the Arabian Gulf region.

• Scholarly communication
• Social media
• Academia.edu
• ResearchGate
• Social science academics

Al-Daihani, S.M. , Al-Qallaf, J.S. and AlSaheeb, S.A. (2018), "Use of social media by social science academics for scholarly communication", Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication , Vol. 67 No. 6/7, pp. 412-424. https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-11-2017-0091

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Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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Studies highlight impact of social media use on college student mental health

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When Kyle Palmberg set out to design a research study as the capstone project for his psychology major at St. Mary’s University of M i nnesota in Winona, he knew he wanted his focus to be topical and relevant to college students.

His initial brainstorming centered around the mental health impact of poor sleep quality. 

“I wanted to look at college students specifically, to see the different ways that sleep quality can be harmed and how that can impact your mental health,” he said. As he reviewed the scientific literature, one variable kept appearing. “The topic that kept coming up was social media overuse,” he said. “It is such an important thing to my target demographic of college students.”

Palmberg, 22, grew up surrounded by social media. He’d heard plenty of warnings about the downsides of spending too much time online, and he’d seen many of his peers seemingly anchored to their phones, anxious or untethered if they had to put them down for more than a few minutes at a time.

“I think from my perspective as someone who’s been really interested in psychology as an academic discipline, social media addiction is also something I’ve been aware of personally,” Palmberg said. “I can tell within myself when things can become harmful or easy to misuse. I often see the hints of addictive behaviors in peers and coworkers.”

Palmberg found much of the published research on the topic inspiring, particularly a 2003 study on internet gambling addiction. 

“They were looking at how internet gambling addiction permeates a person’s behavior,” he said. Palmberg hypothesized that there may be behavioral similarities between people addicted to online gambling and those addicted to social media. 

“Social media provides this convenient platform for users to interact with others,” he said. “As users grow addicted, they learn that they can come back to that social platform more and more to get their needs met. The tolerance users have for gratifying that social need grows. Then they have to use social media more and more often to get those benefits.”

The negative impact of a growing dependence on social media is that time spent online takes away from real in-person interactions and reduces the time a person has available for basic personal care needs, like sleep and exercise, Palmberg said. This can ultimately have a negative impact on mental health.

“As a person builds a high tolerance for the use of social media it causes internal and external conflict,” he said. “You know it is wrong but you continue to use it. You relapse and struggle to stop using it.” Palmberg said that social media use can be a form of “mood modification. When a person is feeling down or anxious they can turn to it and feel better at least for a moment. They get a sense of withdrawal if they stop using it. Because of this negative side effect, it causes that relapse.”

Palmberg decided he wanted to survey college students about their social media use and devise a study that looked at connections between the different motivations for that use and potential for addictive behaviors. He ran his idea by his academic advisor, Molly O’Connor, associate professor of psychology at Saint Mary’s, who was intrigued by his topic’s clear connections to student life.

“We often notice social media addiction with our student population,” O’Connor said. She knew that Palmberg wouldn’t have a hard time recruiting study participants, because young people have first-hand experience and interest in the topic. “He’s looking at college students who are particularly vulnerable to that addiction. They are tuned into it and they are using it for coursework, socialization, entertainment, self-documentation.”

O’Connor said she and her colleagues at the university see signs of this addiction among many of their students. 

“They’ll be on their phones during class when they are supposed to pay attention,” she said. “They can’t help themselves from checking when a notification comes through. They say they had trouble sleeping and you’ll ask questions about why and they’ll say they were scrolling on their phone before they went to bed and just couldn’t fall asleep.”

The entertainment-addiction connection

Once his study was given the go-ahead by his advisor and approved by the university for human-subjects research, Palmberg had two months to recruit participants. 

To gather his research subjects, he visited classes and gave a short speech. Afterward, students were given an opportunity to sign up and provide their emails. Palmberg recruited 86 participants this way, and each was asked to fill out an anonymous survey about their social media habits.

Palmberg explained that the main framework of his study was to gain a deeper understanding of why college students use social media and the circumstances when it can become addictive and harmful to their mental health and well-being. He also hypothesized that perceived sleep quality issues would be connected to social media addiction.

After collecting the surveys, Palmberg said, “We essentially threw the data into a big spreadsheet. We worked with it, played with it, analyzed it.” He explained that his analysis focused on motivations for social media use, “including building social connections and self-documentation.”

What Palmberg discovered was that his subjects’ most popular motivation for social media use was for entertainment. While some participants listed other motivations, he said the most “statistically significant” motivation was entertainment.

“Not only was entertainment the most highly endorsed reason to use social media in the study,” Palmberg said, “for college students it was the only motivation we analyzed that was statistically connected to social media addiction and perceived stress. The entertainment motivation was also related to poor sleep quality.”

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He found connections between a reliance on social media for entertainment and addictive behaviors, like an inability to shut down apps or put a phone away for an extended period of time. “If a person is using social media for entertainment, they are more likely to be addicted to social media than someone who is not using it for entertainment,” Palmberg said.

The structures of popular social media platforms reinforce addictive behaviors, he said. “Current trends in social media lean more toward entertainment platforms like TikTok or Instagram. People are going on there just to pass time,” Palmberg said. These brief and repetitive formats encourage addiction, he said, because the dopamine high they create is short-lived, causing users to keep visiting to get those fleetingly positive feelings. 

O’Connor supports Palmberg’s conclusions. A reliance on social media platforms for entertainment encourages addiction, she said. This is backed up by student behavior.

“My big takeaway was the interest in the entertainment variable was the key predictor of addiction. It’s not necessarily the students that are using it to communicate with each other, but the ones that say, ‘I need to kill time between classes,’ or, ‘I’m bored before bed,’ or, ‘I am trying to relieve stress after working on homework.’” The addictive aspect comes in, O’Connor said, “because users want to be entertained more and more. They are constantly looking for the next thing to talk about with their friends.”

Palmberg said he believes that not all social media use among college students has to be addictive. “It is important for people to view social media as not only something that can be harmful but also something that can be used as a tool. I like to emphasize with my study that it’s not all negative. It is more of an emphasis on moderation. It is possible to use social media responsibly. But just like almost anything, it can be addictive.”

An emphasis on digital well-being

Twice a year, in an effort to get out ahead of digital addiction, students at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter are encouraged to take a deeper look at their social media use and its impact on their mental health. Charlie Potts, the college’s interim dean of students, heads the effort: It’s a clear match with his job and his research interests.

During the semiannual event, known as “Digital Well-Being Week,” Gustavus students learn about the potentially negative impact of social media overuse — as well as strategies for expanding their social networks without the help of technology.

Potts said that event has been held four times so far, and students now tell him they anticipate it. 

“We’ve gotten to the point where we get comments from students saying, ‘It’s that time again,’” he said. Students say they appreciate the information and activities associated with Digital Well-Being Week, Potts continued, and they look forward to a week focused on spending less time with their phones.

“They remember that we put baskets on every table in the dining hall with a little card encouraging them to leave their phones there and instead focus on conversations with others,” he added. “We even include  a card in the basket with conversation starters. Students are excited about it. They know the drill. It is something they like to do that feels good.”

Potts’ own academic research has focused on mental health and belonging. Each fall, he also heads up a campus-wide student survey focused on digital well-being and how to balance phone use with other aspects of mental and physical health.

In the survey, Potts said, “We ask students, ‘How much time do you spend every day on social media? How does it make you feel?’ Students are blown away when they see the number of hours that the average Gustie spends online. The vast majority are in the 4-7 hours a day on their phone range.”

The survey, which uses a motivational style of interviewing to help participants get at the root of why altering their social media behaviors may be valuable to their overall health and well-being, focuses on small changes that might reduce participants’ reliance on technology in favor of face-to-face interaction. 

“We do a lot of conversations with students about strategies they could use,” Potts said. “Things like plugging your phone in across the room while you sleep, leaving it behind while you go to work out at the rec center, subtle changes like that. We also talk about mental health and mindfulness and how…you discern your values about what you are consuming and how that might affect you.”

Though Potts said he has encountered some resistance from students (“You roll with that and help them understand the value of that and think about how they are going to make that change,” he said), he’s also heard a lot of positive student feedback about his survey — and the twice-yearly focus on digital well-being.  

“What we found with our students is they realize deep down that their relationship with their phones and social media was not having a positive impact on their life,” Potts said. “They knew change would be good but they didn’t know how to make change or who to talk to about that or what tools were at their disposal. These options help them understand how to do that.”

Andy Steiner

Andy Steiner is a Twin Cities-based writer and editor. Before becoming a full-time freelancer, she worked as senior editor at Utne Reader and editor of the Minnesota Women’s Press. Email her at  [email protected] .

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