Very very interesting: Social Media Lure Academics Frustrated by Traditional Publishing - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education

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chronicle.com/article/Social-Media-Lure-Academics/126426/

By Jennifer Howard

"Social media have become serious academic tools for many scholars, who use them for collaborative writing, conferencing, sharing images, and other research-related activities. So says a study just posted online called "Social Media and Research Workflow." Among its findings: Social scientists are now more likely to use social-media tools in their research than are their counterparts in the biological sciences. And researchers prefer popular applications like Twitter to those made for academic users.

The survey, conducted late last year, is the work of Ciber, as the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research is known. Ciber is an interdisciplinary research center based in University College London's department of information studies. It takes on research projects for various clients. This one was paid for by the Emerald Publishing Group Ltd. The idea for the survey came from the Charleston Observatory, the research arm of the annual Charleston Conference of librarians, publishers, and vendors.

An online questionnaire went to researchers and editors as well as publishers, administrators, and librarians on cross-disciplinary e-mail lists maintained by five participating publishers—Cambridge University Press; Emerald; Kluwer; Taylor & Francis; and Wiley. Responses came from 2,414 researchers in 215 countries and "every discipline under the sun," according to David Nicholas, one of the lead researchers on the study. He directs the department of information studies at University College London. . ."

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