Abstract
This paper aims to establish the relationships between the altmetrics derived from the
academic social networking tool ResearchGate and bibliometrics derived from the citation
resources Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar to establish which academic social
networking tools gives the most advantage. The investigation forms part of a longitudinal
study investigating the e-visibility of the environmental science researchers at the University
of South Africa during December 2014 and December 2016. The bibliometric indicators from
Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, and altmetric indicator data from ResearchGate
were collected in six (6) month intervals, and analysed using SPSS to determine the Pearson’s
rank correlations. The results indicated a positive correlation between the bibliometric
indicators derived from Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, and the altmetric
indicators derived from the academic social networking tool ResearchGate. The results show
that ResearchGate altmetric indicators influence the bibliometric indicators positively.
ResearchGate therefore can be recommended for academic social networking as a strategy to
influence the Environmental Science researcher’s citations positively at Unisa.