The social web: A new communication medium and scientific evaluation tool

Abstract

The term Web 2.0 describes World Wide Web sites that emphasize user-generated content, usability, and interoperability. It was popularized by Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty at the O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 Conference in late 2004, though it was coined by Darcy DiNucci in 1999. An important part of Web 2.0 is the Social web, consisting of a number of online tools and platforms where people share their perspectives, opinions, thoughts and experiences. Nowadays, the Social Web is highly accepted in the general population, and it can be regarded as an imperative communication tool; yet scientific community remains reluctant to exploit its potential. A recent study showed that the adoption of the social Web by 1517 highly cited scientist is very low, being LinkedIn the most popular. In a survey conducted by Nature in 2014 with 3509 respondents, more than 88% of scientists and engineers said that they were aware of Google+ and Twitter with little difference between countries, but still only 15% visited those sites regularly. In this work, we present the main Web 2.0 tools in the context of communication medical physics and scientific research. Furthermore, we analyze its potential value as a scientific evaluation tool by introducing the concept of altmetrics.