Influence of social networking sites on scholarly communication: A study using literature in Artificial Intelligence

With the advent of Web 2.0 tools and especially social media, researchers are increasingly active on the Web. This has resulted in a transformation in the scholarly communication process through which researchers share and bookmark research works in online platforms. In the present study, the influence of social networking sites on the field of Artificial Intelligence research was studied. The study analysed the influence of social networking sites on both conference papers and journal articles, as in a field like Artificial Intelligence both channels of research dissemination play important roles. The top 100 cited journal articles and conference papers in Artificial Intelligence published in 2009 and 2013 were analysed for their presence on social networking sites and online reference managers. It was found that amongst social networking sites, Mendeley had the greatest influence on research in Artificial Intelligence. Mendeley played the most remarkable role in transforming scholarly communication with the highest coverage of both journal articles and conference papers for both the years 2009 and 2013. It was found that the influence of social networking sites was greater for journal articles than conference papers, the latter still having a lower average Mendeley readership. The highest correlation between citation counts and Mendeley readership was found for journal articles published in 2009, followed by journal articles published in 2013, conference papers published in 2009 and conference papers published in 2013. The average Mendeley readership was also higher for journal articles than for conference papers. Mendeley readership was also found to be higher for journal articles and conference papers published earlier in time, indicating that research works published earlier in time were more popular in social networking sites and online reference managers.