Qualitative meta-synthesis of scientific collaboration and digital academic identity in social networking sites

Abstract

The scientific collaboration and the management of the academic identity play an important role in the academic productivity, as some studies have already reported. With the emergence of social networking sites, those possibilities have been increased and the presence in the academic activity is not always a must. Several studies have dealt with those topics but it does not exist yet a literature systematization that helps researchers in identifying possible working perspectives in this field and shows the advantages and disadvantages of alternative online ways of collaboration and development of the academic identity. The current study aims at addressing this gap by providing a qualitative meta-synthesis of works centered on the use of academic and general (topic not specified) social networking sites with purposes of scientific collaboration and taking care of the academic digital identity by academic researchers. The searches were conducted in five international databases of relevance in the education field. In addition, some references from primary studies were incorporated. This process brought to the final identification of 68 studies between 2008 and 2018, whose findings are synthesized in the results according to a division of categories. In the conclusion the lack of studies with a critical vision and deep analysis of the academic practices in social networking tools is highlighted and the results are discussed along with lines of future research related to the identified dimensions: networking, knowledge exchange and digital identity.