Abstract
Academic social networking sites (SNSs) are growing rapidly. Worldwide, academicians use academic SNSs for many reasons regardless of their nation, gender, position, and discipline. In this paper, the authors extend their previous work in exploring the distribution and behavior of a particular academic SNS (academia.edu) on a large scale. The authors classify users into different groups based on their position, discipline, and continent. This study gives a better understanding of usage patterns in academic SNS, especially in the lack of large-scale studies about different classes of users on academic SNSs.
Highlights
Academic social networking sites (SNSs) are growing rapidly
This paper aims to find whether different groups of academic users have behavioral patterns on academic SNSs
Among each of the four disciplines, we found that the dominant academic position categories were faculty members, graduate students, independent researchers, and post-doctoral researchers
Summary
Academic social networking sites (SNSs) are growing rapidly. This growth is driven mainly by the continuous demand from academic people to exploit different aspects of the Internet. In academic SNSs these features have more emphasis on academic metaphors. Several reasons motivate people to join academic SNSs, especially communicating peers and collaborating with them. Academic SNSs users vary on different levels, such as their academic position, discipline, country, experience, and motivation. This wide diversity is reflected on their behavior and usage patterns. It is obvious that studying users’ distribution and behavior is essential in providing a better understanding their needs and improving academic SNSs
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
