{"id":58,"date":"2018-03-17T17:57:24","date_gmt":"2018-03-17T17:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/meetingofminds\/?p=58"},"modified":"2018-05-04T13:35:57","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T12:35:57","slug":"user-research-findings-on-academic-social-network-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/meetingofminds\/2018\/03\/17\/user-research-findings-on-academic-social-network-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"Analysis of Existing Websites\/User Research: Findings on Academic Social Networking Sites"},"content":{"rendered":"

Academic Social Networking Sites (ASNS)<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are a large range of social networks used by academics, this includes A<\/span>cademic Social Networking sites.<\/span><\/p>\n

Four of the most popular ASNS are Academia.edu, Researchgate, Mendeley<\/a>, and Zotero<\/p>\n

These sites are used by academics to: organize, create profiles, display research work and connect with peers with similar research interests.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some sites, such as researchgate include researcher impact metrics, but these ‘measures’ have been subject to criticism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Differences in Use Dependent on Discipline<\/strong><\/p>\n

Investigations of ‘Academia.edu’ found differences in the extent of its use between disciplines and between types of user (faculty, graduate students, independent researchers, postdoctoral researchers), and in the number of interests listed by those from different disciplines (Thelwal and Kousha 2013, Ortega 2015, and Megwalu 2015).\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Ortega (2015) and Megwalu (2015) found that users from the humanities and social sciences were more active and proficient in using these sites than natural scientists.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Other studies have found that junior academics are more active in such networks.<\/p>\n

Ratings of ASNS<\/b><\/p>\n

In a recent study (Bhardwaj 2017<\/a>), Researchgate was given the highest ranking by users, followed by Academia.edu, and then Mendely. <\/span><\/p>\n

But none of these sites was rated as \u201cExcellent\u201d by users, as they were seen to lack incorporation of:<\/span><\/p>\n