Abstract
This paper reports on a survey, as part of an e-visibility longitudinal comparative study looking at
the usage of social networking tools to enhance e-visibility between 2014-2017, conducted on the
participating School of Environmental Science (SES) researchers at Unisa. The results indicate the
majority used free search engines and websites to ascertain their online presence. LinkedIn was the
preferred tool used to create research e-profiles for discoverability. Regarding accessibility, the
majority of the respondents did not link their research output onto repositories and 38.4% opted not
to archive their research publications. The results found Academia.edu and ResearchGate to be the
preferred social networking tools for determining alternative research impact using altmetrics and
Mendeley as the most preferred social networking tool for reference management. Knowledge
sharing is enhanced by the increased e-visibility of SES researchers. E-visibility benefits from
increased online presence, increased discoverability and accessibility of researchers via research e–
profiles.