[Purpose/significance] At present, the scientific social network has become an important informal scientific communication tool for researchers. There are dozens of scientific and social networking tools at home and abroad. Among them, such as ResearchGate and academia.edu have tens of millions registered user. [Method/process] Firstly, this paper summarized the five research focuses of this tool on the basis of the visual analysis of scientific research social networking academic papers. Then, based on A. C. Bullinger and S. H.Hallerstede's research on social networking functions and classification, we analyzed the Chinese and foreign representative social networks’ function design to explore the features, weaknesses and differences. [Result/conclusion] The above analysis shows that the development of scientific research management tools is not enough, and the social tagging and altmetrics still need continued exploration.