Beata Stachowiak* INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION IN THE CONTEXT OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES FOR SCIENTISTS Abstract: In this paper, the author considers the alterations that occurred in the international scientific communication. It  is  mainly technological development that exerts the  influence over these altera- tions – particularly the emergence of new media. The major part of this paper is dedicated to the issue of the use of social networking sites in scientific communication. In her considerations, the author re- fers to the world-wide research pertaining to social media in the meantime demonstrating the attitudes of Polish scientists in connection with the former. This paper also contains the results of the research on the attendance to social networking sites of the academics from the Nicolaus Copernicus University with the particular attention paid to Research Gate. The considerations lead to the conclusions that in Poland scientists approach the possibilities offered by social media with the slight skepticism. Keywords: scientific communication; information society; social media; social networking sites; ResearchGate. 1. INTRODUCTION The development of information society is directly connected with the common use of information- -communication technologies while practicing a variety of professions – including the one of a scientist or an  academic. Nowadays, the  academic faces ICT on  many planes of  their professional activities. It is not only the research and didactic activity but also other actions taken within professional du- ties. The diagram 1 presents the selected computer applications used by academics in different realms of their professional activities. Torun International Studies 2015, No. 1 (8), pp. 109-117 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/TIS.2015.010 * Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, beata.stachowiak@umk.pl. http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/TIS.2015.010 110 Beata Stachowiak 2 Source: one’s own work (Stachowiak 2012). This synthetic and in a sense highly selective overview of the computer applications illustrates the scope of changes which took place in the profession of an academic. These, however, do not include all the changes. Some transformations occurred in scientific communication and they are significant too. 2. Scientific communication, social media Communication is a term which is not defined unambiguously. Its definitions underline intentionality and the social and symbolic nature of communication. No less important are such constituents as the traits of senders and receivers, feedback, context, code and the channel. The main purpose of communication is negotiating the way of perceiving the world, creating similar constructs in the minds of interlocutors within a given culture. The term also indicates that understanding somebody else’s point of view implies employing similar interpretative schemas of reality as well similar evaluation of things, people and symbols (Nęcki 1996). The special type of communication is scientific communication, which is a part of social communication. Scientific communicated may be regarded as the process encompassing the creation, dissemination and exploitation of information from the moment of scientists specifying their research until its public dissemination (Sordylowa 1997). Without thus understood scientific communication, the scientific development would be inconceivable and after all the efficacy of communication determines the pace of scientific development. What is a prerequisite to do science is the indispensable access to the already acquired scientific information; hence, the essence of scientific communication is the transfer. Generally speaking, it embraces everything that occurs in the realm of mediation between information resources and scientists. (Sapa 2009). Scientific communication is not homogenous. One can distinguish external scientific communication and the internal one. The first type should be understood as the process of “explaining and popularizing scientific research through – among others – publishing popular-science papers, organizing science events, creating the image of a scientist and science. (...). In other words, it means the popularization of science and the explication of the works and research results of scientists’ corpus" 2 . Externality involves the fact that the 2 Entry called „Komunikacja naukowa, czyli co?” on the blog edited by Emanuel Kulczycki, entry from 9 December 2012 avaialable on the Internet at http://ekulczycki.pl/teoria_komunikacji/komunikacja-naukowa- czyli-co dostęp from 13 December 2012. Diagram 1. The planes at which the academics use the information-communication technolo- gies Source: one’s own work (Stachowiak 2012). This synthetic and in  a sense highly selective overview of  the  computer applications illustrates the scope of changes which took place in the profession of an academic. These, however, do not include all the changes. Some transformations occurred in scientific com- munication and they are significant too. 2. SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION, SOCIAL MEDIA Communication is  a term which is  not defined unambiguously. Its definitions underline intentionality and the social and symbolic nature of communication. No less important are such constituents as the traits of senders and receivers, feedback, context, code and the chan- nel. The  main purpose of  communication is  negotiating the  way of  perceiving the  world, creating similar constructs in the minds of interlocutors within a given culture. The term also indicates that understanding somebody else’s point of view implies employing similar inter- pretative schemas of reality as well as similar evaluation of things, people and symbols (Nęcki 1996). The special type of communication is scientific communication, which is a part of so- cial communication. Scientific communicated may be regarded as the process encompassing the creation, dissemination and exploitation of information from the moment of scientists specifying their research until its public dissemination (Sordylowa 1997). Without thus un- derstood scientific communication, the scientific development would be inconceivable and after all the efficacy of communication determines the pace of scientific development. What is  a prerequisite to  do science is  the indispensable access to  the  already acquired scientific information; hence, the essence of scientific communication is the transfer. Generally speak- 111International scientific communication in the context... ing, it embraces everything that occurs in the realm of mediation between information re- sources and scientists. (Sapa 2009). Scientific communication is not homogenous. One can distinguish external scientific communication and the  internal one. The  first type should be understood as  the  process of  “explaining and popularizing scientific research through  – among others  – publishing popular-science papers, organizing science events, creating the  image of  a scientist and science. (...). In other words, it  means the  popularization of  science and the  explication of  the  works and research results of  scientists’ corpus”1. Externality involves the  fact that the receivers are situated outside the communicating group, that is outside of scientists. On the other hand, internal communication “embraces such phenomena as publishing scientific papers, scientific blogs, running and using social networking sites for scientists2. Internality is related to the fact that the communicating group and the receiving group is the environ- ment of scientists. Still, in English, scientific communication in a broader sense is further distinguished into two distinct concepts: scholarly communication and science communication, which also reflects the typology into two separate subsets. Nowadays, this well-beaten model of  disseminating the  research results in  scientific journals, books or during symposia and conferences is supported with information-communication technologies. We are witnessing a peculiar process of convergence, the result of which is not only widening the scope of pos- sibilities of communicating with scientists but also inducing in researchers a series of ques- tions, doubts and more or less profound reflections. Certainly, one of them should be related to the use of social media in scientific communication. Social media provide the  scientific environment with many possibilities which are still underestimated by scientific environments. It seems that the opinion uttered by Edwin Bendyk is still valid. In 2009, he claimed that Polish science is plodding out of the moder- nistic model of  communication characterized with the  clear division of  labour: scientists conduct research, whose results are presented via specialized channels such as scientific jour- nals, symposia, conferences (Bendyk 2009). However, social media properly used enable us to promote scientific knowledge, participate in the public discourse but also to initiate important debates. 3. SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES FOR SCIENTISTS Social networking sites serve the  purpose of  enabling people to  communicate. Some part of  them are of  the  professional nature. Social networking sites for scientists may be re- garded as the spots for making contacts, transferring scientific information, promoting one’s achievements, making evaluations and identifying people as  well as  communicating with them. The skillful creation of one’s own profile on the academic social networking site may contribute to – among others – the increase of the number of citations and the bigger rec- ognition in  the  scientific environment. The  basic function on  the social networking site is the user’s profile which normally resembles the scientific corpus of a given scientist with 1 Entry called „Komunikacja naukowa, czyli co?” on the blog edited by Emanuel Kulczycki, entry from 9 December 2012 avaialable on the Internet at http://ekulczycki.pl/teoria_komunikacji/komu- nikacja-naukowa-czyli-co dostęp from 13 December 2012. 2 Ibidem. 112 Beata Stachowiak the acquired education, scientific degrees and areas of research and publications being espe- cially underlined. The user may often post the bibliographic description of one’s own pub- lications and in some cases he or she may post their abstracts. On the selected networking sites, there is a possibility of presenting one’s activity related to the participation in scientific conferences and the membership in scientific associations. The profile also contains contact details. Social networking sites dedicated to scientists offer other services such as the access to selected publications or journals databases. These days, in the cyberspace there are a few such social networking sites of academic nature. The example of a social networking site for scientists implemented in Poland was to be the iProfesor site. According to its designers, the main motivation was to stimulate the co- operation between scientists in  Poland. They planned enabling on  this site the  database of scientific journals. Currently, and actually since December 2012, iProfesor can be referred to only in the past tense since the site has been unavailable. The idea of that site was afflicted with many disadvantages from the very beginning. The first of them was the loyalty because the  site was dedicated to  Polish scientists. The  second was its hermetic character because one could take advantage of  its sources only upon entering the  community. Anybody in- terested in his or her membership in that site was verified with respect to the place of his or her employment. After a dozen of months of the site being operative, one could arrive at the  conclusion that scientists themselves were not interested in  their activities on  that site. Many accounts stayed inactive and their users did not reply messages or did not accept the  invitations. The  project actually existed for about 2 years; it  was funded by European Union in 85% and its cost amounted to 913 853,66 PLN3. Another instance of the social networking site, but in this case of international range is ResearchGate4. This site is dedicated to scientists of all scientific disciplines. In the middle of October 2015, 8 million users were registered at this site. At this site, each of the users create a profile on which what is enabled is publishing one’s scientific works, lectures and papers. The users of ResearchGate can also use the virtual library and create micro-papers, that is  abstracts having no more than three hundred words. Furthermore, ResearchGate has other functions typical of social networking sites such as: the possibility of exchanging messages in the Internet, keeping contacts with other users on Internet fora, writing a blog, the participation in discussion groups. Some of the international organizations use this site to communicate with its members5. The users of this site can use the browser for job offers as well as they can exploit the da- tabases containing scientific papers and their abstracts. The  collection of  the  publications available at this site encompass the main databases and over a thousand sources of the open source type. In ResearchGate, there is also the system of recommending publications bear- ing some thematic resemblance to secondary literature in the area of research of the person recommending them as  well as  to  the  users of  the  similar area of  research. The  authors of  the  texts may post their abstracts using the  application JournalFinder, which, having conducted the analysis of the contents, will indicate which scientific journal might be in- 3 Innovative Economy Operational Program [OPI], WND-POIG.08.01.00-10-107/09. 4 Social networking site ResearchGate can be found at http://www.researchgate.net/. Using it is allowed upon creating an account. 5 An instantiation of such an organization might be European Science Foundation. http://www.researchgate.net/ 113International scientific communication in the context... terested in a given paper. For each user, what is calculated is the RG indicator, which means the scientific reputation. Another social networking site dedicated to scientists is ResearcherID6. The tools im- plemented at this site enable us to  browse the  scientific corpus with respect to  surnames, scientific disciplines and countries. The next solution is Index Copernicus Scientists7 – an in- ternational social networking site dedicated to scientists. This site makes use of the informa- tion entered by its users – the members of the community. Each user creates his or her own profil which also contains the  parametres from ResearcherID. The  information contained in  the  profile embraces personal details, publications, the  participation in  scientific con- ferences, in  projects and grants etc. In Index Copernicus one creates then a  transparent scientific profile for a  researcher but also  – which is  a sort of  novelty  – what is  generated is  the objective evaluation of  the  scientific corpus based on  the complex multi-parametre and patented algorithms. Apart from that, as the designers of that project inform, for each scientist what is automatically created is the list with the information related to the potential co-operators in the conduct of scientific research, new publications from the scientist’s area of interest as well as it provides the information on the available grants, organized meetings and scientific conferences. 4. METHODOLOGY OF RESEARCH The research was conducted in three terms: July 2013, March 2014 and March 2015. It made use of  the  Internet database of  the  employees of  Nicolaus Copernicus University, from which the research derived the information about the organizational structure. The contents of the database was compared with the list of the persons having the profile on the social networking sites dedicated to  scientists, the  profiles being affiliated with UMK. In 2015, the research was narrowed down to ResearchGate because it proved to be the most popular. The objective of the research was to diagnose the changes with respect to the activity of the employees of Nicolaus Copernicus University on social networking sites and to deter- mine what factors influence their activity there. 5. RESEARCH RESULTS The research dating back to  2013 indicated that the  most popular networking site is ResearchGate. 13% of academic teachers from Nicolaus Copernicus University [herein- after referred to as UMK] were registered there. A far less great popularity boasted Research ID- 3% of the overall number of lecturers and IndexCopernicus with mere 2%. In 2014, the  research indicated similar disproportions, ResearchGate proved to  be of  some interest to  21% of  academic teachers from UMK; ResearchId reached the  level of  7%, whereas 6 Social networking site ResearcherID can be found at http://www.researcherid.com. Using it re- quires creating an account. 7 Index Copernicus Scientists is one a the products of the joint Index Copernicus International. 114 Beata Stachowiak the scientists’ membership in IndexCopernicus remained unchanged and amounted to 2%. For this reason, in 2015 the academics from UMK’s activity in ResearchGate was analyzed. The percentage of academic teachers in that social networking site has been ceaselessly increasing; since 2013 till 2014, the share went up from 13% to 29% although the structure of faculty leaders remained the same. The most active entities in 2013-2015 proved to be the Faculty of Biology and Environmental Protection, the Faculty of Chemistry, the Faculty of Earth Sciences and the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. The discrepancy between the leader and the holder of the last position is about 71 percentage points. The de- tails are presented in the diagram 1. 7 What is noticeable is the difference between particular faculties; against the background of the whole university, the least visible are the representatives of humanities and social science. The absence of scientists on the academic networking sites is a symptom of a wider-scope phenomenon manifested as the unwillingness to use ICT in academic work or regarding electronic publications as less worthy etc. The diagnosis dating back from 2009 and stated by Edwin Benedyk, who claimed that Polish science is plodding out of modernistic model of communication remains valid up to date. However, social media properly used allow for promoting scientific knowledge, for participating in public discourse as well as initiating vital discussions. The weekly analysis of the author’s profile at the turn of June and July 2015 shows that due to the membership in ResearchGate, the scientists from Poland popularize their achievements in the world. The number of people from other countries browsing or downloading the publications is much greater than the ones from Poland; they are often people inhabiting other continents. For instance, let’s look at the category- downloading publications: 8-14 June: Poland - 12 persons, USA - 12, China - 10, France - 5. 22-28 June: USA - 24 persons, China - 14, France - 13, Poland - 4, Ukraine - 1, Indonesia - 1. 13-19 July: USA - 29, China - 16, Francje - 3, Russia - 1. The category- browsing the publications: 8-14 June: France - 22 persons, USA - 10, Poland - 9, China - 4. 22-28 June: France 57 persons, USA - 6 persons, Poland - 4, China - 2, Indonesia - 1, Germany - 1. In the category viewing the profiles: 22-28 June: USA - 7 persons, China - 5, Poland 4, France - 3. 6-12 July: USA - 8 persons, China - 5, Iran - 2, Russia - 2, Francje - 1. It is worth noting that this popularizing channel is free of chargé; the actions might be intensified by the participation in discussions, asking questions etc. 6. CONCLUSIONS ICT tools are only the tools facilitating doing the job of a lecturer. Their use mustn’t be an end in itself because then their use is perceived as something artificial or even pretentious. It is worth remembering that particular media differ from each other; for instance, running one’s own Internet site in comparison with social networking sites is of a more emotional and at the same time less official nature. 74% 63% 51% 48% 11% 19% 23% 51% 21% 17% 20% 19% 55% 8% 19% 7% 3% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% July 2013 March 2014 March 2015 Diagram 1. Percentage share of academics from UMK in Research Gate within 2013-20158. Source: my own work. The more detailed analysis indicates that, the highest share fell upon the academics with Ph.D. with habilitation- 37%, and the second best were Ph.D.’s- 30% closely followed by professors- 29%. Table 1 contains the detailed data. 8 WBiOŚ  – Faculty of  Biology and Environmental Protection; WCh  – Faculty of  Chemistry; WFiIS – Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics; WFar – Faculty of Pharmacy; WFil – Faculty of Languages; WH Faculty of Humanities; WL – Faculty of Medicine; WMiI – Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science; WNP  – Faculty of  Education; WNiZ  – Faculty of  Economic Sciences and Management; WNH – Faculty of History; WNoZd – Faculty of Health Sciences; WNoZi – Faculty of Earth Sciences; WPiA – Faculty of Law and Administration; WPiSM – Faculty of Political Sciences and International Studies; WSzP – Faculty of Fine Arts; WT – Faculty of Theology. 115International scientific communication in the context... Table 1. The share of academics from UMK with the division into faculties. Faculty The percentage of pro- fessors on RG The percentage of Ph.D.’s with habilita- tion on RG The percentage of Ph.D.’s on RG WBiOŚ 78% 90% 65% WCh 57% 63% 58% WFAiIS 54% 50% 48% WFar 67% 57% 44% WFil 10% 17% 11% WH 15% 0% 31% WL 40% 50% 25% WMiI 43% 70% 54% WNP 10% 40% 24% WNEiZ 32% 0% 13% WNH 10% 38% 21% WNoZd 23% 42% 20% WNoZi 42% 78% 58% WPiA 6% 0% 6% WPiSM 6% 8% 31% WSzP 7% 0% 8% WT 0% 6% 0% mean 29% 37% 30% Source: my own work What is  noticeable is  the difference between particular faculties; against the  back- ground of  the  whole university, the  least visible are the  representatives of  humanities and social science. The absence of scientists on the academic networking sites is a symptom of a wider-scope phenomenon manifested as the unwillingness to use ICT in academic work or regarding electronic publications as less worthy etc. The diagnosis dating back from 2009 and stated by Edwin Benedyk, who claimed that Polish science is plodding out of modern- istic model of  communication remains valid up to  date. However, social media properly used allow for promoting scientific knowledge, for participating in public discourse as well as initiating vital discussions. The weekly analysis of the author’s profile at the turn of June and July 2015 shows that due to the membership in ResearchGate, the scientists from Poland popularize their achieve- ments in the world. The number of people from ot her countries browsing or downloading 116 Beata Stachowiak the publications is much greater than the ones from Poland; they are often people inhabiting other continents. For instance, let’s look at the category- downloading publications: 8-14 June: Poland – 12 persons, USA – 12, China – 10, France – 5. 22-28 June: USA – 24 persons, China – 14, France – 13, Poland – 4, Ukraine – 1, Indonesia – 1. 13-19 July: USA – 29, China – 16, Francje – 3, Russia – 1. The category- browsing the publications: 8-14 June: France  – 22 persons, USA  – 10, Poland  – 9, China  – 4. 22-28 June: France 57 persons, USA – 6 persons, Poland – 4, China – 2, Indonesia – 1, Germany – 1. In the cat- egory viewing the profiles: 22-28 June: USA – 7 persons, China – 5, Poland 4, France – 3. 6-12 July: USA – 8 persons, China – 5, Iran – 2, Russia – 2, Francje – 1. It is worth noting that this popularizing channel is free of charge; the actions might be intensified by the par- ticipation in discussions, asking questions etc. 6. CONCLUSIONS ICT tools are only the  tools facilitating doing the  job of  a lecturer. Their use mustn’t be an end in itself because then their use is perceived as something artificial or even pretentious. It is worth remembering that particular media differ from each other; for instance, running one’s own Internet site in comparison with social networking sites is of a more emotional and at the same time less official nature. There are many arguments counting in favour of using social networking sites on aca- demic grounds. First, which mainly concerns the lecturers of X generation, using new means of communication on professional grounds requires not only reflection and the acquisition of new skills but also it allows to break the routine, to avert the burn-out syndrome, which particularly emerges after 20-30 years of  professional career. Second, using social media certainly constitutes an act of popularizing science on the part of an academic teacher and as such it should be treated when it comes to the evaluation of a given lecturer. Running an Internet site for students or a scientific blog after all requires a greater involvement and systematicity than writing many a popular-science paper. Third, in the countries in which funding science is marginal. In the case of Poland, in 2015, research and development was funded with 0,42% of  GNP. For the  sake of  comparison, the  mean for European Union amounted to about 2% and in Finland- almost 4%. Academic social networking sites are the way to come into the limelight with one’s research results beyond one’s local environ- ment. Unfortunately, publishing in foreign journals very often entails making payments and some part of faculties cannot afford to bear such costs. Hence, scientific employees should strive for reaping maximum benefits from academic social networking sites. Fourth, academ- ic teachers particularly within humanities and social science should intensify their activities in the realm of popularizing their own corpus. The provision concerning the dissemination of science is even included in proceedings for promotion. And although lectures and popu- lar-science papers are important, they do not have a bearing on coming to the fore beyond one’s local environment. A means to that end is exactly what the global network provides. 117International scientific communication in the context... REFERENCES Bendyk E.: Wiedza dla wszystkich? [in:] Przewodnik po otwartej nauce, J. Hofmokl, A. Twardowski, B. Bednarek-Michalska, K. Siewicz, J. Sprosta (red). Warszawa 2009. Kulczycki E.: Wykorzystanie mediów społecznościowych przez akademickie uczelnie wyższe w Polsce. Badania w formule otwartego notatnika, Repozytorium Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza, http://hdl.handle.net/10593/2853. Nęcki Z.: Komunikacja międzyludzka. Kraków 1996. Sapa R.: Metodologia badań obszaru pośredniczenia w komunikacji naukowej z perspektywy nauki o informacji. Kraków 2009. Słownik terminologii medialnej, W. Pisarek (red). Kraków 2006. 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