Social Academic Analytics (SAA) is proposed as a new scientific approach toward developing suitable instruments to promote virtual collaboration among participants in the higher education field. SAA refers to the process of extracting relational data for the purpose of exploring organizational structures within virtual learning organizations and knowledge networks. Implementation of SAA provides opportunities for organizers and instructors to optimize socio-technological infrastructures within (virtual) knowledge networks so as to encourage collaborative work, while offering significant potential for quality assurance. SAA combines theories and models from both informatics and the social sciences at the macro level in order to formulate data analysis for the field of (web-based) educational research. In this paper we introduce SAA and its constituent activities. Finally we select case studies and applications to compare analytical concepts from diverse disciplines and conclude with further suggestions as to how SAA concepts can be applied in educational data management.