Research Outline

How are social media tools being used by scholars to formulate discussions and share knowledge about their academic works?

Goals:
•Research the ways in which scholars are using/could use online social media for
academic purposes
•Outline the ways in which scholars are currently using social media and compare
(if possible) these uses from scholars in the developed vs. the developing world
•Make recommendations for how we can enhance existing traditional systems to
incorporate (or at least recognize) the use of informal online tools for
scientific purposes and academic knowledge sharing (focusing especially on
Bioline – how can we improve this basic and traditional system based on the use
of social media by scholars)
•Bioline as a traditional and basic system, how can we improve this service based
on the discovered use of social media? (could be that using social media for
researchers from the developing world is not an advantage, if that’s the case,
say so in the recommendations section)

Guiding Questions:
1.How are scholars using online social media tools?
a.What social media tools are being used?
b.What types of activities/goals do scholars have in using these tools?
c.What are the benefits/disadvantages of using social media tools for
academic purposes?
2.How are scholars from the developed world using social media tools? Does their
utility differ from that of scholars from the developing world?
a.Is there a way of tracking the use of social media tools by scholars from
different parts of the world/areas of development?
b.What factors play into these differences? (i.e. the digital divide, level
of education, availability of technology, etc.)
3.How is the use of social media by scholars captured and/or evaluated?
a.How do we track the use of online social media by scholars?
b.How can we enhance the tracing of this use within academic circles?
4.Looking at the Library of Congress’ recent decision to store all Twitter posts
as ‘historical data’, will this become the case for other social media content?
a.How legitimate is user-generated content?
b.Has the legitimacy of such content been on the rise or falling?
c.Will informal content eventually become increasingly integrated within
other more traditional types of systems?
d.How will this affect the notion of open vs. closed access online services
given that these tools are based on free use and content