Usage of Social Networking Tools in Research and Collaboration

Social networking tools have become an integral part of our daily lives. Research and collaboration is an area where social networking tools have been expected to play a major role by revolutionizing the way research is conducted, communicated and disseminated. The purpose of this paper is to explore the actual use of the various social networking services and tools that are available to help researchers work together, and to share resources and results. A two stage approach was employed in this research. Firstly, a descriptive/interpretive approach was adopted to provide an outline of the current and relevant literature with regard to social networking and its adoption in research and collaboration. Secondly, to confirm the initial findings from the literature review an online survey was conducted to elicit the extent to which social networking is used for research purposes in academia. The findings show that 93% of the participants use social networking to support their research collaboration activities for reasons including speed and efficiency. Among these, 56% respondents have used social networking for their research work for more than one year and found that these tools have greatly helped them in building successful collaborative research projects. In contrast, those who are not using social networking indicated reasons including time, privacy, and security concerns. This research can improve researchers' awareness of how social networking tools can be used in advancing the inter-organizational collaboration. This study significantly contributes to literature in the area of using social networking in research and collaboration.

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