An excerpt from chronicle.com of February this year:
A survey carried out by David Nicholas’ Ciber research group at UCL, involving 2414 researchers in 215 countries showed that “social scientists and humanists were the biggest users of social media” and ”Social scientists are now more likely to use social-media tools in their research than are their counterparts in the biological sciences. And researchers prefer popular applications like Twitter to those made for academic users.
In those gatherings, Mr. Nicholas has heard rumors of scholarly revolution. For instance, he said, participants say social media are “being used as an alternative to the existing system by young researchers who feel frustrated” by the tight control that senior scholars and traditional publishers have over the selection and dissemination of research.”
http://chronicle.com/article/Social-Media-Lure-Academics/126426/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
