  The increasing popularity of academic social networking sites (ASNSs)
requires studies on the usage of ASNSs among scholars and evaluations of the
effectiveness of these ASNSs. However, it is unclear whether current ASNSs have
fulfilled their design goal, as scholars' actual online interactions on these
platforms remain unexplored. To fill the gap, this article presents a study
based on data collected from ResearchGate. Adopting a mixed-method design by
conducting qualitative content analysis and statistical analysis on 1,128 posts
collected from ResearchGate Q&A, we examine how scholars exchange information
and resources, and how their practices vary across three distinct disciplines:
library and information services, history of art, and astrophysics. Our results
show that the effect of a questioner's intention (i.e., seeking information or
discussion) is greater than disciplinary factors in some circumstances. Across
the three disciplines, responses to questions provide various resources,
including experts' contact details, citations, links to Wikipedia, images, and
so on. We further discuss several implications of the understanding of
scholarly information exchange and the design of better academic social
networking interfaces, which should stimulate scholarly interactions by
minimizing confusion, improving the clarity of questions, and promoting
scholarly content management.

Social and Information Networks