Although there are a number of social networking sites that are widely used by academic and non-academic people mostly for entertainment, the academic social networking sites (ASNSs) specifically target scholars. The ASNSs are the virtual platform where researchers can create a profile and communicate with others sharing similar research interests. The current study attempts to explore the awareness and use of five famous ASNSs; namely ResearchGate, Acedemia.edu, LinkedIn, Mendeley and Scholastica by the South Valley University (SVU)'academic staff. A structured questionnaire was sent to different categories of the SVU academics via email and Facebook. Data analysis revealed that most of the respondents were aware of and using the ASNSs. ResearchGate demonstrated the highest level of awareness and usage followed by LinkedIn, Acedemi.edu, Mendeley and Scholastica, respectively. Further studies are required to explore the use of the SVU academic staff to other ASNSs and the effects of these sites on their professional performance.

Ranking of Egyptian Faculties of Veterinary Medicine based on PubMed-Indexed Publications: A Bibliometric Analysis Bibliometric analysis of PubMed publications is a quantitative indicator for research productivity of scientific institutions. The current study aimed to quantitatively analyze and compare the research publications productivity of the Egyptian faculties of Veterinary Medicine published between 2000 and 2014 in PubMed-indexed journals. Egyptian faculties of Veterinary Medicine produced together 710 articles. According to their contributions to the total productivity, the 15 Egyptian faculties were ranked as follow; Cairo on the top followed by Assiut, Mansura, Zagazig, Alexandria, Benha, Suez Canal, Beni-Suef, Kafr El-Sheikh, South Valley, Menoufia, Damanhur, Sohag, Aswan and Minia. Cairo, Assiut and Mansura produced more than 52% of total publications, while Aswan and Minia had no publication contribution during the study period. The productivity of most faculties showed a fluctuation pattern (no specific pattern of an increase or decrease), however when the study years were grouped into periods of 5 years each, it was found that most of the faculties presented a progressive increase during the periods 2000-2004, 2005-2009 and 2010-2014. Most faculties have their publications with first author affiliated to them. Authorship pattern analysis revealed that the multiple authorship trends were dominated over the single ones. Multiple-authored papers had two, three, four, five or more contributors. Department’s contributions were relatively diverse from faculty to another and some departments were not represented in faculty publications. In the current study, the PubMed research output of the Faculties of Veterinary Medicine was quantitatively analyzed. The future study will focus on the qualitative analysis of the PubMed publications of these faculties using the journal impact factor and citation count.

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