Abstract
Knowledge sharing in academia has become increasingly important for researchers with their research online profiles becoming the vehicle of choice to advancing their research e-visibility. The proliferation of social networking tools with a research focus have become ideal online research communities for promoting the online presence and discoverability of a researcher and enhancing the accessibility of the researcher’s research output. This paper reports on the e-visibility themes 1) online presence, 2) researcher discoverability, and 3) accessibility of research output, of the environmental science researchers (SES) at the University of South Africa as part of a longitudinal e-visibility study during the period 2014 and 2016. The investigation into research e-visibility focused on the factors contributing to the increase in research e-visibility and the promotion of knowledge sharing. The e-visibility indicators represented via the bibliometric and altmetric data were sourced and collected from the appropriate tools i.e. bibliometrics from Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar; and the altmetric data collected from academic social networking tools i.e. ResearchGate, Academia.edu and Mendeley. The results indicate that the exposure to an e-visibility awareness strategy show an overall increase in the e-visibility indicators for the SES researchers with an increase in the net research online presence of 10.3%; the net researcher discoverability indicators increasing with 28%; and the research output accessibility indicators increasing with 18.3%. Altmetrics and bibliometrics become valuable indicators for measuring the research e-visibility of researchers in academia. This study found that e-visibility awareness, as part of an e-visibility strategy, enhanced research e-visibility, thereby increasing the research online visibility, the researcher’s discoverability, and the accessibility of the research output of the SES researchers at University of South Africa. Knowledge sharing in academia is increasingly advanced as researchers embrace these online research communities and the realization of the value of their research e-visibility.