Social networks as an approach to the enhancement of collaboration among scientists

Abstract

The private use of online social networks is exceedingly popular. In business environments, web services of such kind as well as proprietary networking solutions are likewise deployed. Online social networks help people socialise and map business relations. In addition, employees use social web services to coordinate tasks and collaboratively manage projects. In the recent past, social networking emerged as a key communication channel in addition to traditional e-mail. However, our study shows that online social networks in research are not used to the same extent. The problem is that the existing solutions do not meet the requirements of the research community. In this article, we propose a conceptual design for the enhancement of online collaboration in the academic environment.