Q&A participation and behavioral patterns on academic social networking sites: a comparative study of academic, corporate and government institutions on ResearchGate

Purpose - This paper aims to explore question and answer (Q&A) participation and behavioral patterns on academic social networking sites (ASNSs) from the perspective of multiple subjects such as academic, corporate and government institutions. Design/methodology/approach - Focused on the Q&A service of ASNSs, this study chooses ResearchGate (RG) as the target ASNS and collects a large-scale data set from it, involving a sample of users and a Q&A sample about academic, corporate and government institutions. First, it studies the law of Q&A participation and the distribution of the type of user according to the sample of users. Second, it compares question-asking behavior and question-answering behavior stimulated by questions among the three types of institutions based on the Q&A sample. Finally, it discusses the Q&A participation and behavioral patterns of the three types of institutions in academic Q&A exchanges with full consideration of institutional attributes, and provides some suggestions for institutions and ASNSs. Findings - The results show that these three types of institutions generally have a low level of participation in the Q&A service of RG, and the numbers of questions and answers proposed by institutional users conform to the power-law distribution. There are differences in Q&A participation and Q&A behavioral patterns among academic, corporate and government institutions. Government and academic institutions have more users participating in the Q&A service and their users are more willing to ask questions, while corporate institutions have fewer users who participate in theQ&Aservice and their users are inclined to provide answers. Questions from corporate institutions attract much more attention than those from the other two types of institutions. Originality/value - This study reveals and compares the Q&A participation and the behavioral patterns of the three types of institutions in academic Q&A, thus deepening the understanding of the attributes of institutions in the academic information exchange context. In practice, the results can help guide different institutions to use the Q&A service of ASNSs more effectively and help ASNSs to better optimize their Q&A service.