Metric assemblages of scientific production: a study on publication, measurement and circulation practices on the Academia.edu platform
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18617/liinc.v20i1.7026Keywords:
Academia.edu, Circulation of scientific production, Digital platform, Metrics, Scientific productionAbstract
Metrics are present in the daily lives of academic researchers in a variety of ways, leveraging processes of comparison and competition that are accentuated by the phenomenon of platformization. In this article, we carry out a case study of the platform Academia.edu in order to discuss how researchers manage their visibility and online persona based on the dynamics of publication, metrication and circulation of scientific production on this academic social network. We propose to view this complex of academic data as “metric assemblages'' (Burrows 2012) and thus highlight how various measurement technologies converge to evaluate performance and guide professional behavior. In addition to a theoretical revision of the issue, we conducted a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with Brazilian researchers who use the platform. These conversations guide a debate on the practices associated with Academia.edu and the regimes of visibility driven by this commercial platform.
References
ACADEMIA.EDU, 2024a. Searching Academia. [Acesso em 03 julho 2024]. Disponível em: https://support.academia.edu/hc/en-us/articles/360042889174-Searching-Academia.
ACADEMIA.EDU, 2024b. Analytics Overview. [Acesso em 03 julho 2024]. Disponível em: https://support.academia.edu/hc/en-us/articles/360042888134-Analytics-Overview.
BEER, David, 2016. Metric Power. London, England: Palgrave Macmillan UK.
BURROWS, Roger, 2012. Living with the H-Index? Metric Assemblages in the Contemporary Academy. The Sociological Review [em linha]. 15 maio 2012. vol. 60, no. 2, p. 355–372. DOI 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2012.02077.x.
DA SILVA NETO, Victo José e CHIARINI, Tulio, 2023. The Platformization of Science: Towards a Scientific Digital Platform Taxonomy. Minerva [em linha]. 28 outubro 2022. vol. 61, no. 1, p. 1–29. DOI 10.1007/s11024-022-09477-6.
DUFFY, Brooke Erin e POOLEY, Jefferson D, 2017. “Facebook for Academics”: The Convergence of Self-Branding and Social Media Logic on Academia.edu. Social Media + Society [em linha]. 17 março 2017. vol. 3, no. 1. DOI 10.1177/2056305117696523.
FELDMAN, Zeena e SANDOVAL, Marisol, 2018. Metric Power and the Academic Self: Neoliberalism, Knowledge and Resistance in the British University. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique [em linha]. 26 janeiro 2018. vol. 16, no. 1, p. 214–233. DOI 10.31269/triplec.v16i1.899.
HELMOND, Anne, 2019. Plataformização da Web. Em: OMENA, Janna Joceli (ed.). Métodos digitais: teoria-prática-crítica. Lisboa, Portugal: ICNova. 2019. p. 49-72.
JORDAN, Katy, 2019. From Social Networks to Publishing Platforms: A Review of the History and Scholarship of Academic Social Network Sites. Frontiers in Digital Humanities [em linha]. 11 março 2019. vol. 6, p. 5. DOI 10.3389/fdigh.2019.00005.
LUPTON, Deborah, MEWBURN, Inger e THOMSON, Pat (org.), 2017. The digital academic: critical perspectives on digital technologies in higher education. New York, EUA: Routledge.
MANCA, Stefania, 2018. ResearchGate and Academia.edu as networked socio-technical systems for scholarly communication: a literature review. Research in Learning Technology [em linha]. 20 fevereiro 2018. vol. 26. DOI 10.25304/rlt.v26.2008.
MARSHAL, Philip, BARBOUR, Kim e MOORE, Christopher, 2017. Academic persona: The construction of online reputation in the modern academy. Em: LUPTON, Deborah, MEWBURN, Inger e THOMSON, Pat (org.). The digital academic: critical perspectives on digital technologies in higher education. New York, EUA: Routledge.
NIYAZOV, Yuri, VOGEL, Carl, PRICE, Richard, et al., 2016. Open Access Meets Discoverability: Citations to Articles Posted to Academia.edu. PLOS ONE [em linha]. 17 fevereiro 2016. vol. 11, no. 2, p. e0148257. DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0148257.
OLIVEIRA, Thaiane Moreira De, COLLAZO, Francisco, URIBE TIRADO, Alejandro, et al., 2022. Presentación. Agendas futuras para Latmétricas. Em: VÉLEZ CUARTAS, Gabriel; OLIVEIRA, Thaiane Moreira De; COLLAZO, Francisco; et al (org.). Métricas de la producción académica: evaluación de la investigación desde América Latina y el Caribe. [s.l.]: CLACSO.
ORTEGA, José Luis, 2015. Disciplinary differences in the use of academic social networking sites. Online Information Review [em linha]. 10 agosto 2015. vol. 39, no. 4, p. 520-536. DOI 10.1108/OIR-03-2015-0093.
PLANTIN, Jean-Christophe, 2016. Algorithmic Accountability in Scholarship: What We Can Learn from #DeleteAcademiaEdu. Media Policy Project [em linha]. 17 fevereiro 2016. Disponível em: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2016/02/17/algorithmic-accountability-in-scholarship-what-we-can-learn-from-deleteacademiaedu/.
PLANTIN, Jean-Christophe e THOMER, Andrea, 2023. Platforms, programmability, and precarity: The platformization of research repositories in academic libraries. New Media & Society [em linha]. 6 junho 2023. p. 1-21. DOI 10.1177/14614448231176758.
ROGERS, Richard, 2019. Engajados de outra maneira: as mídias sociais - das métricas de vaidade à análise crítica. Em: OMENA, Janna Joceli (ed.). Métodos digitais: teoria-prática-crítica. Lisboa, Portugal: ICNova. 2019. p. 73-98.
THOMAZ, Petronio Generoso Thomaz, ASSAD, Renato Samy e MOREIRA Luiz Felipe P., 2011. Uso do Fator de impacto e do índice H para avaliar pesquisadores e publicações. Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia [em linha]. 25 março 2011. vol. 96, no. 2, p. 90–93. DOI 10.1590/S0066-782X2011000200001.
YAMADA, Yuki e TEIXEIRA DA SILVA, Jaime A, 2023. Academia Letters: Examination of an ‘Experimental’ Academia.edu Publishing Model. Journal of Scholarly Publishing [em linha]. 1 janeiro 2023. vol. 54, no. 1, p. 103–120. DOI 10.3138/jsp-2022-0028.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Isabela Crispim Brito Furtado, Carlos Frederico de Brito d’Andréa
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
Authors retain copyright and grant Liinc em Revista the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The authors have permission and are encouraged to deposit their manuscripts and versios of record (VoR) in their personal web pages or institutional repositories, generic repositories etc., before (pre-print) or after (post-print) the publication in Liinc em Revista, according to its open access depositing policy registered in the Directory of Editorial Policies of Brazilian Journals (DIADORIM), kindly providing a link to the article published on Liinc's website.
Liinc em Revista, published by Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License – CC BY 4.0 
