SCIENTISTS IN SCIENTIFIC SOCIAL NETWORKS: COMMUNICATIVE PRACTICES, PROFESSIONAL CONNECTIONS AND COLLABORATIONS

Grimov O.A.

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to discover the potential of scientific social networks in the context of the practices of developing and supporting professional links and collaborations of scientists. The article gives the data of the empiric research that was carried out by the author (a survey among scientists using scientific social networks, N=200). Basing on the data collected the author analyses stable social and communicative practices of scientific social network users while building social connections, targeting users; considers academical connections and collaborations created and supported by them in scientific social networks, as well as their significance, stability and their final result. The experience of the successful academic collaborations of social network users is studied. Basing on the factor analysis the author creates a typology of scientists in scientific social networking sites by the criteria of value orientations and prevailing forms of network activity. The scientific novelty of the research lays in the classification of scientists' users strategies in scientific social networks and socio-philosophical generalization of the results of studying the socio-communicative practices of scientific social networks users, especially their activity in building academical connections and collaborations. The factual contents and the importance of developing and supporting academical connections in the scientific social networks were studied. The result of the work is the conclusion that despite a formally claimed substantial potential of social networks in the formation and support of social and communicative connections, the real meaning of the academic links based on their usage is insignificant, and the activity of the users reduces to the nominal participation in communicative practices as well as distribution and consumption of scientific content.

Keywords

scientific social networks; scientific content; academ-ic collaborations; social connections; networking; communication prac-tices: community.

DOI: 10.31249/scis/2022.01.07

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