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The purpose of this paper is to compare four popular academic social networking sites (ASNSs), namely, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley and Zotero.

Evaluation method has been used with the help of checklist covering various features of ASNSs. A structured checklist has been prepared to compare four popular ASNSs, comprising 198 dichotomous questions divided into 12 broad categories.

The study found that performance of ASNSs using the latest features and services is not up to the mark, and none of the site is rated as “Excellent”. The sites lack in incorporation of session filters; output features; privacy settings and text display; and search and browsing fields. Availability of bibilographic features and general features is poor in these sites. Further, altmetrics and analytics features are not incorporated properly. User interface of the sites need to improve to draw researchers to use them. The study report reveals that ResearchGate scored the highest, 61.1 per cent points, and was ranked “above average”, followed by Academia.edu with 48.0 per cent and Mendeley with 43.9 per cent are ranked “average”. However, the Zotero (38.9 per cent) was ranked “below average”.

Accreditation agencies can identify suitable sites in the evaluation of institutions’ research output. Further, students and faculty members can choose the site suiting their needs. Library and information science professionals can use the checklist to impart training to the academic community which can help fostering research and development activities.

The study identifies features that ought to be available in a model ASNS. These features are categorized into 12 broad categories. The findings can also be used by developers of the sites to enhance functionalities. Institutions can choose suitable sites while collaborating with other institutions.

This paper aims to explore the usage of academic social networking sites (ASNSs) among the research scholars in Central Universities of Delhi, India.

A structured questionnaire was designed and personally distributed among 200 research scholars in Central Universities in Delhi in May 2016. Of this, 180 filled-in questionnaires were personally collected by the investigator, eliciting a response rate of 90 per cent.

Findings of the study reveals that research scholars have knowledge of ASNSs. ResearchGate and Academia are the most used ASNSs among research scholars. ResearchGate is used the most for connecting to other research scholars, and Academia is used for sharing and following research. Additionally, ASNSs help research scholars in research and learning and to share research ideas and experience. Finally, research scholars find ASNSs time-consuming and have cited data security as main concern for using academic social networks.

The findings of the study show that potential uses of ASNSs in Indian libraries are slow compared to the libraries of developed countries and some of the developing countries. It is suggested that universities under study may realize the benefits of ASNSs and incorporate these tools in their websites to enhance faster transfer and retrieval of information.

The results also stress upon the responsibility of research supervisors to accord knowledge of ASNSs among research scholars and encourage them to join and use ASNSs efficiently and effectively for building professional connections and collaborations in their research area.

The study is significant because it represents one of the earliest works to shed the light on the current level of use of SNSs and ASNSs by research scholars in Central Universities in Delhi, which are in primitive nature. They provide space for self-expression, research updates, expert advice, connecting with fellow scholars, creating and joining events and discussions, presenting their views on a particular topic, finding collaboration on projects, finding jobs and much more.

ASNSs have further promoted the open source movement. The paper apprises the academic stakeholders about the unique features, adoption, acceptability and usage of ASNSs for research work, exchange of information and collaborations, so that more productive and quality research is produced. The findings will also guide research scholars to find popular ASNSs, so that they can build more academic connections.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the extent to which academic librarians in African universities know and use self-archiving options to make their papers visible globally.

An online survey was designed using SurveyMonkey software to collect data from 455 academic librarians working in 52 universities in Africa.

The study revealed that the academic librarians in Africa are aware of ResearchGate, institutional repository, personal website/server, kudos and Mendeley and they actually upload papers to self-archiving platforms such as institutional repository, ResearchGate, academia.edu and personal websites/servers. Factors such as increased exposure of one’s previously published work, provides exposure for works not previously published (e.g. seminar papers), broadens the dissemination of academic research generally and increases one’s institutions’ visibility were among the options the academic librarians rated as very important factors that motivate them to submit their scholarly output to the self-archiving options. It was also found that majority of the academic librarians in Africa checked the publishers’ website for copyright policy compliance before submitting their papers to the platform.

The study called for academic librarians in developing countries to voluntarily sign-up to register with self-archiving options such as ResearchGate, kudos, Mendeley.com, academia.edu and others to enable them self-archive their published papers for access globally by students, researchers, etc.

The findings of this study will add to the body of knowledge by bringing to light the extent of awareness and use of self-archiving options by academic librarians in universities in Africa.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which academic librarians in Nigerian universities use self-archiving options to make their research papers visible globally.

An online survey was designed using SurveyMonkey software to collect data from 394 academic librarians in Nigerian Universities.

The study revealed that the academic librarians in Nigerian universities know and actually use self-archiving options such as ResearchGate, institutional repository and Academia.edu to self-archive their publications. While other promotional tools such as kudos, Mendeley.com and personal websites/servers are not popularly used by the academic librarians. Increased exposure of previously published work, broadens the dissemination of academic research generally, and increases institutions’ visibility were among the factors the academic librarians indicated as very important that motivate them to contribute their scholarly output to self-archiving options.

One major challenge to the study is that many academic librarians in Nigeria do not check their e-mails regularly to enable them to respond to a request to participate in an online survey; some of them do not have stable internet facilities, whereas others are reluctant to respond to an online questionnaire. These reasons led to a low response rate which makes it difficult to generalize findings.

Findings from the study will create awareness for academic librarians in developing countries to see the need to self-archive their pre-print and accepted version of their papers in different self-archiving platforms.

Self-archiving of papers by authors will lead to an increased visibility of the author and possible citation of the work and chances of collaboration with international colleagues for research projects.

The purpose of this paper is to carry out an altmetric analysis of faculty members and research scholars of Department of Physics and Astrophysics, University of Delhi (India) (Univ.Delhi P&A) who are members of the academic social networking site ResearchGate. ReserachGate is a rich source of altmetric indictors such as publications, reads, profile views, citations, impact points, RGScore, followers and following, etc. The RGScore, unique to ResearchGate, was further explored in depth in the study.

The data were collected manually by visiting the profile pages of all the members who had an account in ResearchGate under Univ.Delhi P&A during the first week of July, 2016. The authors found a total of 173 members in ResearchGate from the department. Data were collected for publications, reads, profile views, citations, impact points, RGScore, followers and following from the profile pages of the members. Correlations were calculated amongst the metrics provided by ResearchGate to seek the nature of the relationship amongst the various ResearchGate metrics.

The analysis revealed that the publications added by researchers to their profiles were relatively low, as 28.32 per cent of the members had not added even a single publication to their profiles. Average reads acquired per person was found to be 909.49 and the median value of reads was found to be 95. Average citation per member in ResearchGate was found to be 414.60 and the median value was found to be 7. Majority of the researchers (45.09 per cent) had impact points in the range of 0.2-50. Most of the members (35.84 per cent) had followers in the range of 1-10. Majority of the members (52.02 per cent) had profile views in the range of 1-100. Most of the members (26.01 per cent) had RGScore equivalent to 0.01. The highest correlation of RGScore was found with publications added by researchers to their profiles, followed by correlation between RGScore and reads, correlation between RGscore and profile views, correlation between RGScore and number of Full Texts and correlation between RGScore and number of followers of a researcher.

Not much research has been conducted in the area of altmetrics, especially using ResearchGate as a source of altmetrics. The findings of the study help in understanding the validity of ResearchGate as a source of altmetrics for research evaluation in a developing country such as India. Also, the novel ResearchGate indicator RGScore has been evaluated in great depth and its relationship with other ResearchGate altmetric and bibliometric indicators has been established.

This paper aims to answer the question of how the Polish representatives of social communication and media sciences communicate the most recent scientific findings in the media space, i.e. what types of publications are shared, what activities do they exemplify (sharing information about their own publications, leading discussions, formulating opinions), what is the form of the scientific communication created by them (publication of reference lists' descriptions, full papers, preprints and post prints) and what is the audience reception (number of downloads, displays, comments).

The authors present the results of analysis conducted on the presence of the most recent (2017–2019) publications by the Polish representatives of the widely understood social communication and media sciences in three selected social networking services for scientists: ResearchGate, Google Scholar and Academia.edu. The analyses covered 100 selected representatives of the scientific environment (selected in interval sampling), assigned, according to the OECD classification “Field of Science”, in the “Ludzie nauki” (Men of Science) database to the “media and communication” discipline.

The conducted analyses prove a low usage level of the potential of three analysed services for scientists by the Polish representatives of social communication and media sciences. Although 60% of them feature profiles in at least one of the services, the rest are not present there at all. From the total of 113 identified scientists' profiles, as little as 65 feature publications from 2017 to 2019. Small number of alternative metrics established in them, implies, in turn, that if these metrics were to play an important role in evaluation of the value and influence of scientific publications, then this evaluation for the researched Polish representatives of social communication and media sciences would be unfavourable.

The small presence of the Polish representatives of the communication and media sciences in three analysed services shows that these services may be – for the time being – only support the processes of managing own scientific output. Maybe this quite a pessimistic image of scientists' activities in the analysed services is conditioned by a simple lack of the need to be present in electronic channels of scientific communication or the lack of trust to the analysed services, which, in turn, should be linked to their shortcomings and flaws. However, unequivocal confirmation of these hypotheses might be brought by explorations covering a larger group of scientists, and complemented with survey studies. Thus, this research may constitute merely a starting point for further explorations, including elaboration of good practices with respect to usage of social media by scientists.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the distribution of profiles from academic social networking sites according to disciplines, academic statuses and gender, and detect possible biases with regard to the real staff distribution. In this way, it intends to know whether these academic places tend to become specialized sites or, on the contrary, there is a homogenization process.

To this purpose, the evolution of profiles of one organization (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) in three major academic social sites (Academia.edu, Google Scholar Citations and ResearchGate) through six quarterly samples since April 2014 to September 2015 are tracked.

Longitudinal results show important disciplinary biases but with strong increase of new profiles form different areas. They also suggest that these virtual spaces are gaining more stability and they tend toward a equilibrate environment.

This is the first longitudinal study of profiles from three major academic social networking sites and it allows to shed light on the future of these platforms’ populations.

The activities of academic researchers are increasingly regulated by neo-liberal ideals, including expectations that researchers are visible online and actively promote their output. The purpose of this paper is to explore how researchers take on this responsibility. It uses the concepts of genre, authorship and self-writing in order to understand how the story of an academic life is constructed on academic web profiles.

A qualitative content analysis was conducted of material on 64 profiles belonging to 20 researchers on institutional and personal websites, as well as on ResearchGate, Academica.edu and Google Scholar.

The study shows that while institutional websites primarily contain researcher-produced material, content on commercial platforms is often co-constructed through distributed authorship by the researcher, the platform and other platform users. Nine different ways in which the profile of an “academic self” may be said to highlight the particular strengths of a researcher are identified. These include both metrics-based strengths and qualitative forms of information about the academic life, such as experience, the importance of their research and good teaching.

This study of academic web profiles contributes to a better understanding of how researchers self-govern the story of their academic self, or resist such governance, in online environments.

The study furthers the knowledge of how researchers make use of and respond to digital tools for online visibility opportunities and how the story of the “academic self” is “made” for such public presentation.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the extent to which academic librarians in Nigerian universities utilize self-archiving options to make their research papers visible globally.

An online survey was designed using SurveyMonkey software to collect data from 394 academic librarians in Nigerian universities.

The study revealed that the academic librarians in Nigerian universities know and actually use self-archiving options such as ResearchGate, institutional repository and academia.edu to self-archive their publications. While, self-archiving platforms like Kudos, Mendeley.com and personal websites/servers are not popularly used by the academic librarians. Factors such as increased exposure to previously published work broadens the dissemination of academic research generally, which increases institutions’ visibility, were among the options the academic librarians indicated as very important factors that motivate them to contribute their scholarly output to self-archiving options.

The study called for academic librarians in developing countries to voluntarily sign-up to register with self-archiving options such as ResearchGate, Kudos, Mendeley.com, Academia.edu and others to enable them to self-archive their published papers for access globally by students, researchers.

Self-archiving of papers by authors will lead to an increased visibility of the author and possible citation of the work and chances of collaboration with international colleagues for research projects.

The purpose of this study is to investigate social science academics’ use of social media for scholarly communication at Kuwait University.

Phase One data were collected through web-based and paper responses to questionnaires. Faculty members, teachers and teaching assistants in the social science faculty were invited to participate. Forty-six of the 100 invited participants responded. Phase Two comprised interviews with 10 respondents.

Social connection platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, received the highest mean score for use (M = 4.35), followed by mobile apps, such as WhatsApp (M = 4.24), and multimedia platforms such as Instagram and YouTube (M = 3.59). Moderate to low use was recorded for academic social media. ResearchGate recorded the highest use (M = 3.09), followed by academia.edu (M = 2.93). “Keeping in touch” was the most frequently reported activity (M = 4.04). Two-thirds of respondents used social media for informal scholarly communication with people they knew. “Lack of university encouragement” received the highest score (M = 3.54) as a factor inhibiting use and almost half the respondents (47.2 per cent) cited “lack of time” as a barrier.

Improving academics’ understanding of the uses of social media might increase their visibility and improve their research and other scholarly activities. Study findings support the development of relevant training programs that include a focus on integrating social media into research activities and the dissemination of research findings.

This study contributes to the limited literature on this topic in Kuwait and the Arabian Gulf region.