Arab scholars’ acceptance of informal scholarly communication tools: applying the technology acceptance model 2 (TAM2)

Purpose: This paper aims to use the technology acceptance model 2 (TAM2) to investigate the perceived ease of use, perceived benefits, barriers to use and acceptance of Arab scholars of informal communication tools in research writing. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopted a quantitative approach using a questionnaire distributed among Arab scholars in Jordan, Egypt and Oman. The questionnaire based on the TAM2 model aimed to measure the acceptance of the sample of informal scholarly communication tools. Findings: The study’s findings confirmed that the sample is considering informal scholarly communication tools are useful for their research. Informal scholarly communication tools increase the papers’ visibility, leading to a higher number of citations, building scholars’ reputation, creating new collaboration opportunities and maintaining the established collaboration. Research limitations/implications: The study’s findings can only be generalized on Arab scholars. The sample size could be one of the limitations, and the sample’s distribution was limited to three Arab universities in Jordan, Oman and Egypt. The authors recommend that future researchers use TAM2 model as a framework for studying the adoption of informal scholarly communication tools in different cultural contexts to achieve a better understanding of factors influencing the adoption of such tools. Practical implications: A practical implication of this research is in drawing the attention of higher education institutions for the potentials of these scholarly communication tools in increasing the availability of publications of their scholars and increasing the citation of these publications, which would help in increasing the ranking of scholars, and the rank of these institutions which opens new opportunities of international research collaboration. Social implications: The outcomes of this research have several implications for the successful adoption of the TAM2 model. This study brings new knowledge to the literature related to informal scholarly communication adoption by the application of TAM2 constructs to determine the adoption behavior; the findings offered evidence of the TAM2 success in predicting adoption of such tools. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, adopting TAM2 in this research will add to knowledge by being one of the first studies to adopt TAM2 to measure acceptance of informal scholarly communication tools.