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This chapter explores the prevalent role of networks, both in person and online, in the gendered academy. The voices and reflections of women scholars are drawn upon to highlight the increasingly important role of social media in the [gendered] academy; implications of networks and social media as a contemporary networking tool are deliberated. Social media may not only boost an individual academics' visibility but also serve as a valuable and efficient networking tool, a navigational compass for academic networks. Brief tips and guidance as to making your online network work for you are also provided in the chapter.

University libraries have traditionally been the primary caretaker of scholarly resources. However, as electronic modes of information delivery replace print materials, expectations of academic libraries have evolved rapidly. In this environment, academic libraries need to be adaptable organizations. Librarianship, though, is deeply rooted in strong values and beliefs which inherently limit receptivity to change and innovation, but these constraints are not absolute. Social network research indicates that professional advice networks play a significant role in how one thinks about and performs work and that individual perspectives are broadened when diverse input is received. Based on social network analysis methods, this study explored the relationship between individual receptivity to innovation and the composition of a person's professional advice network through a purposive sample of academic librarians in Illinois. The group completed a survey that explored two dimensions: (1) the nature of relationships within their professional advice network and (2) the individual's personal receptivity to innovation. Analysis of the nature of relationships within the professional advice networks was based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques, in contrast to the analysis of the respondents’ receptivity to innovation which was based on quantitative measures. Based on the information from the 440 respondents, the results of this research indicate that there is a relationship between the size of the professional advice networks and individual's receptivity to innovation, but additional aspects of the professional advice network may play a role in an individual's overall receptivity to innovation.

The study examines how late adolescents use the resources embedded in their social network to obtain the information and support they need to do their homework. A particular attention is paid to how social network sites (SNSs) are used and perceived by late adolescents for academic help seeking.

This qualitative study uses in-depth interviewing and critical incident technique. An egocentric approach to Social Network Analysis is also employed to examine the core social network of each participant.

Most adolescents had a solid personal social network but did not always fully take advantage of the resources embedded in it for schoolwork. Availability was the most important criteria for deciding who to approach. SNSs were often used to obtain the help they needed, although phone calls and in-person visits were considered more efficient in certain situations.

This study draws on a small purposive sample that may limit generalization. This research contributes to our understanding of the resources late adolescents have access to within their core social network, the way they take advantage (or not) of these resources for schoolwork, and the role SNSs play in the process. Findings have implications for services that educators and school librarians should provide to support the educational needs of late adolescents.

This study contributes more generally to our understanding of late adolescents’ use of people as primary sources of information to complete school-related homework.

Purpose – Mobility of youth in multiple foster care placements contributes to diminished life chances and outcomes. Foster care youth mobility during care results in numerous school changes within one academic year which hinders educational achievement. This qualitative study examines a group of Latino alumni of foster care and their experiences related to housing and education.

Methodology – Interviews with 25 young Latino adults ranging in age from 18 to 22 examined foster care placement, transitions to independence, and experiences after foster care. Researchers used a semi-structured interview guide, and tape-recorded interviews transcribed and coded for emergent themes.

Findings – Results suggest that as youth experience school mobility, social capital aids in promoting positive educational experiences. This research emphasizes the importance of positive social capital for Latino foster care youth and their educational achievement, evidenced in both adult and peer social networks. Few studies have examined Latino foster care youth experiences, and currently there are no studies that address educational experiences of these youth.

This chapter takes a look at the Social Web. Humanities scholars are, by and large, a fairly social group. Attend any of the Modern Language Association conferences and you will be inundated with invitations to attend events hosted by publishers, groups within MLA, universities, and alumni organizations. The way we now include apps as an inherent part of our socialization, however, is changing and evolving as a result of some of the tools that are to be associated with the digital humanities, albeit not necessarily as apparently so as some others. This chapter explores the familiar players like Facebook™, Google+™, Twitter™, and others and discusses how they are being used by those in the field, contextualizing them within a variety of disciplines in the humanities through case studies while situating the category alongside theories that make sense of their use. Not as commonly used in academic social networks are vlogging applications along with student blog sites, which are also examined in this chapter. It is in this and subsequent chapters where augmented reality enhancements will be used. Please follow the directions at the beginning of Chapter 2 to access these additions.

Academic social networking (ASN) sites are becoming a popular communication medium among scholars. This case study was designed to explore communication behaviors of physicists, linguists, and sociologists on an ASN site called Academia.edu, their motivations for using it, and the perceived impact of their use of the site on their professional activities. Results from this study are valuable for designing computer-mediated and web-based communication media for scholars and also for adding richness to the literature related to scholarly communication. For the purpose of this study, data was collected using three different instruments: Server log, survey, and interview. Data used for analyses included a total of 20,309 server log data, 267 survey responses, and 28 interviews from scholars of Physics, Sociology, and Linguistics who use Academia.edu. Results from the study showed that the use of Academia.edu is dependent on the discipline scholars are affiliated with, their professional status, and the time of the year. Unlike physicists, linguists and sociologists are more inclined to using Academia.edu and other ASN sites. Although linguists and sociologists actively use Academia.edu, their motivations to use the site are different. These differences in user-motivations and user-activities across the disciplines are influenced by variations in the social and cultural practices of the disciplines. This study used Whitley’s (2000) theory of degrees of mutual dependence and task uncertainty to explain the differences in the adoption and use of Academia.edu across the three disciplines.

Supervisors and other academic staff can provide PhD students with invaluable professional support and opportunities for advancing their careers. This stems from the strong academic and networking provisions often offered to PhD students by nature of the supervisory mentorship. Although this professional relationship is highly beneficial in itself, many PhD students also wish to develop social and more personal friendships with their supervisors, in addition to academic connections. In this way, PhD students may seek a space to comfortably share their personal lives, identities, and experiences with supervisors and develop a working and personal relationship that extends beyond their doctoral program.

In order to better support how and why PhD students build social and personal relationships with their supervisors, this chapter draws upon evidence from an international collaboration across three institutions in the United Kingdom and China related to doctoral students’ social transition experiences. Building on our experience using an innovative mixed method combination of social network analysis, longitudinal diaries, blogs, and in-depth interviews, we explore the complex, dynamic, and, at times, turbulent social relationships between PhD students and supervisors. Specifically, this chapter provides tips for PhD students to manage and maintain social relationships with their supervisors in order to build lasting connections. This includes advice for establishing personal acquaintanceships between students and supervisors and bridging the gap from supervisor to colleague to friend. Altogether, readers will consider actionable steps for developing socially meaningful and sincere relationships with supervisors or other mentors.

Purpose – As researchers need partners to collaborate with, this study aims to provide author recommendation for academic researchers for potential collaboration, conference planning, and compilation of scientific working groups with the help of social information. Hereby the chapter analyzes and compares different similarity metrics in information and computer science.

Methodology/approach – The study uses data from the multidiscipline information services Web of Science and Scopus as well as the social bookmarking service CiteULike to measure author similarity and recommend researchers to unique target researchers. The similarity approach is based on author co-citation, bibliographic coupling of authors and collaborative filtering methods. The developed clusters and graphs are then evaluated by these target researchers.

Findings – The analysis shows, for example, that different methods for social recommendation complement each other and that the researchers evaluated user- and tag-based data from a social bookmarking system positively.

Research limitations/implications – The present study, providing author recommendation for six target physicists, is supposed to be a starting point for further approaches on social academic author recommendation.

Practical implications – The chapter investigates in recommendation methods and similarity algorithm models as basis for an implementation of a social recommendation system for researchers in academics and knowledge-intensive organizations.

Originality/value of chapter – The comparison of different similarity measurements and the user evaluation provide new insights into the construction of social data mining and the investigation of personalized recommendation.

Organization development is often mourned as stagnant or perhaps dead, but most of these declarations seem to be insular, being supported primarily by anecdotal or survey research among organization development scholars and practitioners. This exploratory study seeks a more objective understanding of the state of organization development by examining big data from the social media platform Twitter. Drawn from over 5.7 million tweets extracted through Twitter's Application Program Interface (API) during 2 months in 2018, this research approaches the state of organization development through a quantitative, abductive study utilizing social network analyses. Organization development is examined through its characteristics as a social network on Twitter and how it relates to and interacts with other familial networks from management and organization studies. Findings show that organization development is relatively inactive as a social network on Twitter, as compared to other familial networks, and the relationships between the organization development network and these familial networks tend to be ones of inequality. Organization development references familial networks much more than any of the familial networks reference organization development. This inequality in social media presence is particularly surprising since several of these familial networks were founded from the field and principles of organization development. We locate organization development's generalist status, as compared to familial networks' specialist status, as generating this interaction disparity drawing on recent research that suggests specialized fields fare better in times of rapid change compared to generalist fields. We discuss the potential for greater specialization of organization development with a reemphasis on its process philosophy and focus.