Use of Academic Social Networking Sites in Research and Research Management Purposes: a Study based on the Academic Staff of the University of Kelaniya

Abstract

Due to the rapid growth of knowledge the information tends to grow exponentially in the world. There has been a tremendous expansion of knowledge in all fields such as political, economic, cultural, education and research and so on. As a result the increasing amount of the information new areas of subject domain are also multiplying at a larger scales. Information is so important in almost every field of human performance. Researchers and scholars from various disciplines carry out various research in different fields. Research has even been done in the past as well as continued in the future too. Researches are done by different kinds of people which include the academic staff of universities. It is very important to use research management tools, techniques and methodologies by the research communities especially by the academic staff of universities. There are educational, research and social networks sites in the web which can be applied for research management purposes. Some examples are Google scholar, Research Gate, Academia including LinkedIn. The list further includes Zotero, RefWorks, EndNote, Mendeley, Readcube, and Qiqqa and so on. Academic staff can use these networks and sites to manage their research. During their research process, the academic staff can include their research information in these networks and sites. Objective of the study is to study the use of those networks and sites by the academic staff for their research management purposes. The sample would be selected from the academic staff of faculties of Social Sciences, Humanities, Science, Commerce and Management including Computing and IT being 100 staff members of university of Kelaniya. Primary data collection will be done using the interviews, questionnaires, observations will be conducted. For collecting secondary data, dissertations, articles, internet data bases, web pages used. . It will be able to explore the present situation of staff using such networks and sites, the user behavior, staff attitudes and the issues and problems they face.