Measuring researchers’ use of scholarly information through social bookmarking data: A case study of BibSonomy

• Published in: Journal of information science Vol. 38; no. 3; pp. 297 - 308
• Main Authors: Borrego, Ángel, Fry, Jenny
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.06.2012; Sage Publications; Bowker-Saur Ltd
• Subjects: Bibliometria; Bibliometrics; Case studies; Citation analysis; Conferences; Exact sciences and technology; Informació científica i tècnica; Information and communication sciences; Information processing and retrieval; Information resources; Information retrieval. Man machine relationship; Information science; Information science. Documentation; Information seeking behavior; Information sources; Information systems; Institutional repositories; Logs; Object repository; Open access publishing; Platforms; Repositories; Research process. Evaluation; Researchers; Scholarly communication; Science and technical information; Sciences and techniques of general use; Social bookmarking; Studies; Surveys; User behaviour; BibSonomy; social bookmarking; scientific information; information behaviour; scholarly communication
• ISSN: 0165-5515; 1741-6485
• DOI: 10.1177/0165551512438353

This paper explores the possibility of using data from social bookmarking services to measure the use of information by academic researchers. Social bookmarking data can be used to augment participative methods (e.g. interviews and surveys) and other, non-participative methods (e.g. citation analysis and transaction logs) to measure the use of scholarly information. We use BibSonomy, a free resource-sharing system, as a case study. Results show that published journal articles are by far the most popular type of source bookmarked, followed by conference proceedings and books. Commercial journal publisher platforms are the most popular type of information resource bookmarked, followed by websites, records in databases and digital repositories. Usage of open access information resources is low in comparison with toll access journals. In the case of open access repositories, there is a marked preference for the use of subject-based repositories over institutional repositories. The results are consistent with those observed in related studies based on surveys and citation analysis, confirming the possible use of bookmarking data in studies of information behaviour in academic settings. The main advantages of using social bookmarking data are that is an unobtrusive approach, it captures the reading habits of researchers who are not necessarily authors, and data are readily available. The main limitation is that a significant amount of human resources is required in cleaning and standardizing the data.