Key contributions and future directions of academic social networking services for the digital academic

With the emergence of academic social networking services (ASNS), the landscape of academic networking has been dramatically revolutionised in the past decade. However, to date, there is a scarcity of literatures that offer a general overview of the services available to researchers. The current paper sought to provide a general overview on the current trends within the academic networking service, and ultimately, its impacts for the digital academic. It specifically focussed on popular academic networking services such as Academi.edu, Mendeley, Piirus and ResearchGate. Twitter – albeit not primarily an academic networking service – has been taken into account. Discussion centres on the benefit, key contributions and future directions of these platforms to both seasoned and early career researchers (ECRs).