Department of Information and Library Science, School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America.
Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2018 Jul 11;13(7):e0198033. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0198033. eCollection 2018.
Altmetric indicators are increasingly present in the research landscape. Among this ecosystem of heterogeneous indicators, social reference managers have been proposed as indicators of broader use of scholarly work. However, little work has been done to understand the data underlying this indicator. The present work uses a large-scale survey to study the users of two prominent social reference managers-Mendeley and Zotero. The survey examines demographic characteristics, usage of the platforms, as well as attitudes towards key issues in scholarly communication, such as open access, peer review, privacy, and the reward system of science. Results show strong differences between platforms: Mendeley users are younger and more gender-balanced; Zotero users are more engaged in social media and more likely to come from the social sciences and humanities. Zotero users are more likely to use the platform's search functions and to organize their libraries, while Mendeley users are more likely to take advantage of some of the discovery and networking features-such as browsing papers and groups and connecting with other users. We discuss the implications of using metrics derived from these platforms as impact indicators.
计量指标在研究领域中越来越常见。在这个异构指标的生态系统中，社会参考管理器被提议作为更广泛使用学术工作的指标。然而，对于这个指标背后的数据，人们的研究还很少。本研究使用大规模调查来研究两个著名的社会参考管理器 Mendeley 和 Zotero 的用户。该调查研究了用户的人口统计学特征、平台使用情况，以及对学术交流中的关键问题的态度，如开放获取、同行评审、隐私和科学奖励系统。结果表明，这两个平台之间存在显著差异：Mendeley 用户更年轻，性别更均衡；Zotero 用户更活跃于社交媒体，更可能来自社会科学和人文学科。Zotero 用户更可能使用平台的搜索功能和组织库，而 Mendeley 用户更可能利用一些发现和网络功能，如浏览论文和群组以及与其他用户建立联系。我们讨论了使用这些平台衍生的指标作为影响力指标的影响。
