ResearchGate: Investigating Altmetric Bibliometric Relationships for Environmental Science Researchers at Unisa

<b>Abstract</b> The purpose of this paper is to establish the relationships between the altmetrics derived from ResearchGate and bibliometrics derived from Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar in order to establish whether the altmetrics indicators influence bibliometric indicators. The investigation forms part of a longitudinal e-visibility study investigating the e-visibility of the Environmental Science researchers at the University of South Africa during December 2014 and December 2016. Using SPSS software, the bibliometric indicator data sourced from Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, and altmetric indicator data sourced from ResearchGate, were analysed to determine the Spearman’s rank correlations between for the Environmental Science researchers. The results indicated a strong positive correlation between the bibliometric indicators and the altmetric indicators. This study finds that ResearchGate altmetric indicators influence the bibliometric indicators positively and the findings recommend ResearchGate to be utilised as an academic social networking tool to influence the Environmental Science researcher’s citations positively at Unisa.<br>