STEM authorship, user-generated reviews and their impact: legitimate or not?

Purpose In this study, STEM resources reviewed in Goodreads were investigated to determine their authorship, linguistic characteristics and impact. The analysis reveals gender disparity favoring titles with male authors. Design/methodology/approach This paper applies theoretical concepts of knowledge commons to understand how individuals leverage the affordances of the Goodreads platform to share their perceptions of STEM-related books. Findings The analysis reveals gender disparity favoring titles with male authors. Female-authored STEM publications represent popular science nonfiction and juvenile genres. Analysis of the scholarly impact of the reviewed titles revealed that Google Scholar provides broader and more diverse coverage than Web of Science. Linguistic analysis of the reviews revealed the relatively low aesthetic disposition of reviewers with an emphasis on embodied experiences that emerged from the reading. Originality/value This study contributes to the understanding of the impact of popular STEM resources as well as the influence of the language of user-generated reviews on production, consumption and discoverability of STEM titles.