Academic Social Networking Sites: A Comparative Analysis of Their Services and Tools

In the last decade there has been an emergence of Academic Social Networking Sites (ASNSs). Each site offers its own combination of tools and capabilities to support research activities, communication, collaboration, and networking. Given their variety, it might be challenging for academics to evaluate and use them. We conducted an exploratory inductive comparative study of the services and tools of a select set of ASNSs. We argue that maintaining multiple profiles might be time-consuming and propose starting a discussion about how we can make this process less cumbersome. We expect that our findings will help academics and researchers make informed decisions about their choice of ASNS.ye