Use of social media sites and readership diversity: A case study at Chalmers University of Technology

Paper in proceeding, 2019

Social media has provided new opportunities for academics to disseminate their research results. They allow users to upload academic papers and links to published papers, track demand for their published articles, and engage in professional discussions with other users (Meishar-Tal and Efrat Pieterse, 2017). This paper aimed to study the use of academic and non-academic profiling sites and platforms amongst scholars at Chalmers University of Technology.We were also interested in the purpose that scholars had for using these platforms. Furthermore, using data about people who register in Mendeley as readers of papers, this article explored diverse types of users of scientific papers by scholars at Chalmers. These gave us insight into the different social media platforms being used, the purpose of use, the readers’ status and their topics of interest at Chalmers. Furthermore, this helped us to provide statistics on how scholarly publications at Chalmers are used for scientific, educational, or other professional purposes.