As part of the national online survey “The use of social media services in science”, Goportis – Leibniz Library Network for Research Information explores which social media tools scientists use in their professional day-to-day work.

The result: when it comes to the professional use of social media services, Wikipedia comes top of the list. 84.7 per cent of the 1,354 respondents use Wikipedia: the online encyclopaedia is usually used passively for reference purposes and to read contributions, but also actively – to a much lesser extent – to create input. Tools for sharing and exchanging data such as Dropbox came second; these are used by 63.4 per cent of the scientists surveyed. Third place was taken by professional and research networks (55.6 per cent) such as ResearchGate, XING and LinkedIn. Scientists use such networks to maintain contacts and establish new ones, demonstrate their presence and find out about new publications and topics.

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