Abstract: [Purpose/Significance] This study takes Zhihu as an example to study the usage behavior of academic papers on Chinese social media in order to provide a reference for expanding the altmetrics data source. [Design/Methodology] This study collected the usage behavior information of academic papers from Zhihu, and divided them into three aspects, including usage scenes, usage forms, and usage contexts.It built a coding system to reveal user behavior characteristics through content analysis, statistical analysis and other methods. [Findings/Conclusion] The usage behavior of academic papers on social media is diverse, complex and regular, which can reflect papers’value and increase the attention to papers. As a typical Chinese social media, Zhihu can be deemed as a new data source of altmetrics for evaluating the social influence of papers. [Originality/Value] This study explores the usage behavior of academic papers on Zhihu, and proposes that Zhihu could deal with the lack of Chinese data source for popular altmetric indicators to some extent.

Key words: Chinese social media, User behavior, Altmetric indicator, Scientific research evaluation, Content analysis