The Usage of Academic Social Network Sites by Researchers in Developing Countries: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Academic social network sites have become vital channels to distribute and share researches. In addition, they allow the spread of ideas, experience, and knowledge among many researchers located around the world. Most of the researchers move in with their papers, profiles, and projects, to gain more communication with other researchers and become more well-known in the academic research world. Yemen is one of least developed countries, suffering from several problems which can be challenging for efficient use of the internet and its tools and services. This paper attempts to investigate the opportunities and challenges when using academic social network sites by researchers in the universities in Yemen and abroad. The impact of age, gender, specialization, place of graduation and current living place on the usage of academic social network sites was also addressed in this paper. The results showed that academic social network sites are still not well-known among Yemeni researchers. More than 33% of respondents do not know about them, although some of them consider to using one of them in future. The opportunities of using academic social network sites are still limited. Most of the respondents focus on view the other profiles rather than sharing their researches.