Title |
Social tagging in the life sciences: characterizing a new metadata resource for bioinformatics
|
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Published in |
BMC Bioinformatics, September 2009
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DOI | 10.1186/1471-2105-10-313 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Benjamin M Good, Joseph T Tennis, Mark D Wilkinson |
Abstract |
Academic social tagging systems, such as Connotea and CiteULike, provide researchers with a means to organize personal collections of online references with keywords (tags) and to share these collections with others. One of the side-effects of the operation of these systems is the generation of large, publicly accessible metadata repositories describing the resources in the collections. In light of the well-known expansion of information in the life sciences and the need for metadata to enhance its value, these repositories present a potentially valuable new resource for application developers. Here we characterize the current contents of two scientifically relevant metadata repositories created through social tagging. This investigation helps to establish how such socially constructed metadata might be used as it stands currently and to suggest ways that new social tagging systems might be designed that would yield better aggregate products. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Greece | 1 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Scientists | 1 | 100% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United States | 11 | 9% |
Spain | 6 | 5% |
United Kingdom | 6 | 5% |
Germany | 4 | 3% |
Canada | 4 | 3% |
France | 3 | 2% |
Mexico | 3 | 2% |
Netherlands | 2 | 2% |
Sweden | 1 | <1% |
Other | 4 | 3% |
Unknown | 78 | 64% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Researcher | 35 | 29% |
Librarian | 14 | 11% |
Other | 14 | 11% |
Student > Ph. D. Student | 14 | 11% |
Student > Master | 14 | 11% |
Other | 26 | 21% |
Unknown | 5 | 4% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Computer Science | 40 | 33% |
Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 29 | 24% |
Social Sciences | 15 | 12% |
Medicine and Dentistry | 7 | 6% |
Psychology | 4 | 3% |
Other | 19 | 16% |
Unknown | 8 | 7% |