Academic Social Networks for Knowledge Sharing: an explanatory study

Abstract

Social media has gathered enough attention in recent years. Every other person now owns an individual account on various social media networks. The social media may be casual like Facebook, Twitter, etc., as well as specific academic social networks (ASNs) focused on the needs of the academic community, like Academia.edu, ResearchGate, etc. Purpose of this research is to highlight the growth of social networks over the past few years, the need and importance of knowledge sharing over academic social networks. This study also examines various similar as well as comparative features of these academic social networks. Given the exponential rise over the documents as well as information shared over these networks, it is essential to highlight the issues and challenges concerning the use of academic social networks regarding information dissemination. This study gives a detailed study of importance, features as well as issues related to the knowledge sharing using various academic social networks.