Comunidades sociales y la investigación por estudiantes universitarios

The Internet is an indispensable tool, social communities favor publishing, sharing information and self-learning. Purpuse: Determine the use of virtual communities as a research tool for postgraduate students. Material and methods: Cross-sectional, non-experimental descriptive, through a survey aimed at the use of social communities in research to postgraduate students of the School of Postgraduate Studies, School of Engineering of the University of San Carlos de Guatemala, enrolled in 2019, randomly selected. Results: 60 people were studied, 50% female, all admitted the use of a virtual community, seven out of 10 use it as a reference for scientific research and three out of 10 use it for non-scientific information. The virtual community for consulting the most used scientific information is Google 86%, Google Scholar 46%, Google Drive 40%, YouTube 34%, WhatsApp 18%, Facebook 16%, other social networks 12%, and scientific journals 2%. Conclusion: A third of students use virtual communities 3 times or more per week as a tool in scientific research by search engines; other sources of scientific review are less used. Initiatives that promote communication, innovation, entrepreneurship and access to scientific information in virtual communities should be created.