Caracterización de las métricas alternativas de ResearchGate: El caso de la Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali

• Main Authors: Steven Montealegre-Arturo, Inés María Linares-Aguirre, Freddy Moreno
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana 2017-12-01
• Series: Salutem Scientia Spiritus
• Subjects: Bibliometric; webmetric; altmetrics; academic social networks; ResearchGate; Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali
• Online Access: http://revistas.javerianacali.edu.co/index.php/salutemscientiaspiritus/article/view/1756/pdf

Background: Academic electronic social networks (AESN) revolutionized in the last decade how to generate, share, disseminate and interact with respect to topics of academic interest, using the internet as the main tool. ResearchGate (RG) is one of the most popular AESN, and based on a system of alternative metrics called RG index, measures the impact of researchers and academic institutions, based on the individual reputation of each user and the reputation collective of the institutions they represent. Aim: Characterize the alternative metrics of the RG profile of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali (PUJ Cali). Materials and methods: A documentary study that obtained bibliometric information from the institutional profile of the PUJ Cali and the user profiles of the professors of the same university in RG, the ScienTI network of Colciencias and Google Scholar. Results: With the information obtained, a ranking was organized with user profiles of RG, whose researchers will have index h in Google Scholar and categorization in CvLAC by Colciencias. We obtained 16 user profiles with an RG index above 16.0 and were compared with other alternative metrics, the Colciencias researcher type and the h index. Conclusions: Although a high RG index does not necessarily correspond to a high h index, the alternative metrics have been constituted in an objective and reliable way to quantitatively and qualitatively measure the impact of academic and scientific contributions within the AESN.