User Participation in an Academic Social Networking Service: A Survey of Open Group Users on Mendeley

Although there are a number of social networking services that specifically target scholars, little has been published about the actual practices and the usage of these so-called academic social networking services (ASNSs). To fill this gap, we explore the populations of academics who engage in social activities using an ASNS; as an indicator of further engagement, we also determine their various motivations for joining a group in ASNSs. Using groups and their members in Mendeley as the platform for our case study, we obtained 146 participant responses from our online survey about users’ common activities, usage habits, and motivations for joining groups. Our results show that 1) participants did not engage with social-based features as frequently and actively as they engaged with research-based features, and 2) users who joined more groups seemed to have a stronger motivation to increase their professional visibility and to contribute the research articles they had read to the group reading list. Our results generate interesting insights into Mendeley’s user populations, their activities, and their motivations relative to the social features of Mendeley. We also argue that further design of ASNSs is needed to take greater account of disciplinary differences in scholarly communication and to establish incentive mechanisms for encouraging user participation.

💡 Research Summary

This paper addresses the paucity of empirical research on how scholars actually use academic social networking services (ASNSs) by focusing on Mendeley, one of the most widely adopted platforms. The authors set out two primary objectives: (1) to map the everyday activity patterns of Mendeley users, and (2) to uncover the motivations that drive scholars to join and participate in groups within the service. To achieve these goals, an online questionnaire was distributed to members of open‑access groups on Mendeley, yielding 146 completed responses. The survey collected demographic information (age, academic rank, discipline), usage frequency (daily log‑ins, average session length), and asked participants to rate, on a five‑point Likert scale, both (a) the extent to which they employ eight distinct platform features (e.g., reference management, article search, profile browsing, group discussion, commenting) and (b) the strength of six motivational factors (professional visibility, collaboration opportunities, discovery of new literature, exchange of discipline‑specific knowledge, reputation building, and contribution to collective reading lists).

Statistical analysis comprised descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, and multiple regression models to examine the relationships between feature usage, group participation intensity, and motivational scores. The findings reveal several salient patterns. First, a dominant majority (78 %) of respondents reported frequent use of research‑oriented functions such as reference management and article search, whereas socially oriented functions (profile following, group discussion) were used by less than half of the sample (42 %). This underscores that Mendeley is still perceived primarily as a research productivity tool rather than a conventional social network. Second, the number of groups a user joins is positively associated with two specific motivations: the desire to increase professional visibility (β = 0.31, p < 0.01) and the wish to share articles they have read with the group’s reading list (β = 0.27, p < 0.05). In other words, scholars who are more “group‑active” tend to view group membership as a means of personal branding and knowledge dissemination. Third, disciplinary differences emerged: scholars in the humanities and social sciences placed higher value on networking and collaborative discussion features, while those in natural sciences and engineering favored data and literature‑sharing functionalities. This suggests that a one‑size‑fits‑all design for ASNSs may be suboptimal; platform interfaces and notification systems should be adaptable to disciplinary norms. Fourth, motivation and actual activity were not perfectly aligned. Users who reported strong visibility‑oriented motives did not necessarily exhibit higher activity levels, indicating that intrinsic motivations alone may be insufficient to sustain engagement. The authors argue that extrinsic incentive mechanisms—such as badges, point systems, or peer‑review recognition—could bridge this gap and encourage more consistent participation.

The study acknowledges several limitations. The sample is confined to open‑group members on Mendeley, which may not represent the broader population of scholars using other ASNSs or closed groups. The reliance on self‑reported data introduces potential social desirability bias, and the predefined set of six motivational items may omit other relevant drivers. For future work, the authors propose integrating server‑side log data and text‑mining of group discussions to capture actual behavior, as well as conducting comparative analyses across multiple ASNS platforms (e.g., ResearchGate, Academia.edu) to identify platform‑specific affordances and constraints.

In conclusion, the paper contributes a nuanced portrait of how scholars interact with Mendeley’s mixed research‑social environment. It highlights that while research‑centric tools dominate usage, group participation is motivated by professional visibility and the desire to share curated literature. The authors recommend that designers of ASNSs incorporate disciplinary customization and robust incentive structures to foster richer, more sustained scholarly interaction, thereby enhancing the overall efficacy of digital academic communication.