Academic Social Networking Sites (ASNSs) are increasingly used by scholars to create academic profiles, share research publications, and interact with peers, among many other functions. However, it remains unclear how factors such as discipline may affect the scholarly use of such sites. This study chose ResearchGate (RG) as the sample site and gathered data from a total of 77,902 users from 61 U.S. research universities at different research activity levels as defined by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The sample users were categorized into six groups based on their affiliated departmental discipline as stated on their RG profiles. The results show that user participation and RG use characteristics vary by discipline. In addition, users from higher research activity level universities tend to show better performance in RG metrics than their lower research activity level counterparts regardless of discipline. The findings of this study help ongoing efforts to better understand the use of ASNSs among researchers, assist researchers in effectively connecting and interacting with peers in their respective disciplines, and contribute to the discussion of ASNSs in the context of scholarly communication, altmetrics, and information behavior in research communities and higher education institutions.

学者越来越多地使用学术社交网站（ASNS）来创建学术资料，共享研究出版物以及与同行互动等许多其他功能。但是，尚不清楚诸如纪律之类的因素如何影响此类站点的学术使用。这项研究选择了ResearchGate（RG）作为样本站点，并收集了来自61所美国研究型大学的77,902名用户的数据，这些用户处于卡内基高等教育机构分类所定义的不同研究活动水平。样本用户根据其RG档案中所述的所属部门纪律分为六组。结果表明，用户参与度和RG使用特征因学科而异。此外，研究活动水平较高的大学的用户，无论其学科如何，与他们研究水平较低的同行相比，在RG指标上往往表现出更好的表现。这项研究的发现有助于正在进行的工作，以更好地了解研究人员对ASNS的使用，帮助研究人员有效地与各自学科中的同伴建立联系和互动，并有助于在学术交流，测高和信息背景下讨论ASNS研究社区和高等教育机构的行为。