LinkedIn use by academics: an indicator for science policy and research?

The increasing importance of social media metrics, such as altmetrics, in evaluating the social impact of research and as a source of data for scholarly research has raised concerns about their representativeness with respect to the academic community. This paper addresses this issue by investigating the adoption of LinkedIn among a representative sample of over 12,000 UK academics, using both Scopus publication data and LinkedIn data. The paper offers two main contributions. Firstly, it identifies the types of researchers visible on LinkedIn, providing valuable insights into the profiles of academics who use this platform. Secondly, it enhances our understanding of the usefulness of LinkedIn as a data source and measure for science and innovation studies. Overall, this paper provides significant insights into the use of LinkedIn by academics and its potential as a data source for research evaluation and scholarly studies.