IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jpubli/v7y2019i1p11-d202592.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Citizen-Scholars: Social Media and the Changing Nature of Scholarship

Author

Listed:
  • Amy L. Chapman

    (Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA)

  • Christine Greenhow

    (Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA)

Abstract

Research is rarely created for private use; researchers publish their work so that others can read and use it, to advance the collective understanding of a field and impact people’s lives. Yet traditional approaches to scholarship, which emphasize publication in subscription-based rather than open access journals, inhibit not only the dissemination of research but also its usefulness, particularly outside of academia. Across all fields, scholars, educators, and members of the public benefit from scholarship which is easily accessible. Open science and public, social scholarship can break down these barriers to accessibility and utility. In this age which calls for a more informed citizenry, the use of social media to share and promote discussion of research could change not only the nature of scholarly communication but also the nature of scholarship and scholars’ roles. In this conceptual article, we argue that practicing public, social scholarship and increasing the use of social media to promote scholarship are the civic responsibility of citizen-scholars , so that research becomes more widely accessible, shareable, and usable in the public sphere.

Suggested Citation

  • Amy L. Chapman & Christine Greenhow, 2019. "Citizen-Scholars: Social Media and the Changing Nature of Scholarship," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-9, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jpubli:v:7:y:2019:i:1:p:11-:d:202592
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/7/1/11/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/7/1/11/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wei Jeng & Spencer DesAutels & Daqing He & Lei Li, 2017. "Information exchange on an academic social networking site: A multidiscipline comparison on researchgate Q&A," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 68(3), pages 638-652, March.
    2. Chris H. J. Hartgerink & Marino Van Zelst, 2018. "“As-You-Go” Instead of “After-the-Fact”: A Network Approach to Scholarly Communication and Evaluation," Publications, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-10, April.
    3. Hamid R. Jamali, 2017. "Copyright compliance and infringement in ResearchGate full-text journal articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(1), pages 241-254, July.
    4. Megan Taylor & Kathrine S. H. Jensen, 2018. "Engaging and Supporting a University Press Scholarly Community," Publications, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-8, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sergio Copiello, 2019. "Research Interest: another undisclosed (and redundant) algorithm by ResearchGate," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(1), pages 351-360, July.
    2. Weiwei Yan & Xin Wen & Yin Zhang & Sonali Kudva & Qian Liu, 2023. "The dynamics of Q&A in academic social networking sites: insights from participants, interaction network, response time, and discipline differences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(3), pages 1895-1922, March.
    3. Leila Tavakoli & Hamed Zamani & Falk Scholer & William Bruce Croft & Mark Sanderson, 2022. "Analyzing clarification in asynchronous information‐seeking conversations," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(3), pages 449-471, March.
    4. Mohamed Boufarss & Mikael Laakso, 2020. "Open Sesame? Open access priorities, incentives, and policies among higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1553-1577, August.
    5. Łukasz Wiechetek & Zbigniew Pastuszak, 2022. "Academic social networks metrics: an effective indicator for university performance?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(3), pages 1381-1401, March.
    6. Sergio Copiello & Pietro Bonifaci, 2019. "ResearchGate Score, full-text research items, and full-text reads: a follow-up study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(2), pages 1255-1262, May.
    7. Kendall Faulkner, 2021. "Faculty Use of Open-Access Journals: A Case Study of Faculty Publications and Cited References at a California University," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-12, August.
    8. Sergio Copiello & Pietro Bonifaci, 2018. "A few remarks on ResearchGate score and academic reputation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(1), pages 301-306, January.
    9. Vivek Kumar Singh & Satya Swarup Srichandan & Hiran H. Lathabai, 2022. "ResearchGate and Google Scholar: how much do they differ in publications, citations and different metrics and why?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(3), pages 1515-1542, March.
    10. Christophe Boudry & Manuel Durand-Barthez, 2020. "Use of author identifier services (ORCID, ResearcherID) and academic social networks (Academia.edu, ResearchGate) by the researchers of the University of Caen Normandy (France): A case study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-16, September.
    11. Kyle J. Burghardt & Bradley H. Howlett & Audrey S. Khoury & Stephanie M. Fern & Paul R. Burghardt, 2020. "Three Commonly Utilized Scholarly Databases and a Social Network Site Provide Different, But Related, Metrics of Pharmacy Faculty Publication," Publications, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-10, April.
    12. Dong Joon Lee & Besiki Stvilia & Seungyeon Ha & Douglas Hahn, 2023. "The structure and priorities of researchers' scholarly profile maintenance activities: A case of institutional research information management system," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 74(2), pages 186-204, February.
    13. Julie Baldwin & Stephen Pinfield, 2018. "The UK Scholarly Communication Licence: Attempting to Cut through the Gordian Knot of the Complexities of Funder Mandates, Publisher Embargoes and Researcher Caution in Achieving Open Access," Publications, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-28, July.
    14. Chris Hartgerink, 2019. "Verified, Shared, Modular, and Provenance Based Research Communication with the Dat Protocol," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-19, June.
    15. Roberta Ruggieri & Fabrizio Pecoraro & Daniela Luzi, 2021. "An intersectional approach to analyse gender productivity and open access: a bibliometric analysis of the Italian National Research Council," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 1647-1673, February.
    16. Vincenzo Corvello & Maria Cristina Chimenti & Carlo Giglio & Saverino Verteramo, 2020. "An Investigation on the Use by Academic Researchers of Knowledge from Scientific Social Networking Sites," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-16, November.
    17. Qian Wu & Chei Sian Lee & Dion Hoe‐Lian Goh, 2023. "Understanding user‐generated questions in social Q&A: A goal‐framing approach," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 74(8), pages 990-1009, August.
    18. Jonathan P. Tennant & Harry Crane & Tom Crick & Jacinto Davila & Asura Enkhbayar & Johanna Havemann & Bianca Kramer & Ryan Martin & Paola Masuzzo & Andy Nobes & Curt Rice & Bárbara Rivera-López & Tony, 2019. "Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(2), pages 1-24, May.
    19. Megan Taylor, 2019. "Mapping the Publishing Challenges for an Open Access University Press," Publications, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-12, November.
    20. Shannon Mason & Yusuke Sakurai, 2021. "A ResearchGate-way to an international academic community?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 1149-1171, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jpubli:v:7:y:2019:i:1:p:11-:d:202592. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.