Consideration #1: You Are Not the Customer
Similar to lớn many of the other academic social networks we cover in the OU Impact Challenge, you are not the customer when you interact with these companies, even though you may feel like one. Instead, you are the hàng hóa that these services seek lớn monetize and/or “offer up” khổng lồ advertisers. We don’t fault businesses for making money; that is the imperative for them khổng lồ exist. But we also see Academia.edu and ResearchGate as an extension of those who monetize what many scholars believe sầu should be freely shared.Importantly, if these companies are bought, sold, or go out of business, what would happen khổng lồ the nội dung you’ve placed there? This is one reason why it is advisable lớn first upload items you want lớn mô tả – articles, preprints, postprints, conference posters, proceedings, slide decks, lesson plans, etc. – lớn SHAREOK (which we’ll be covering in Chapter 12 of the OU Impact Challenge). Librarians maintain an OU Faculty/Staff Collection và a Graduate Student Collection in SHAREOK where you can deposit your work. The items in SHAREOK are indexed by Google and Google Scholar, so they are searchable, findable, & downloadable by researchers around the world. OU librarians maintain the platkhung, the nội dung, và the links. Most importantly, maintaining and preserving content is one of the core missions of the OU Libraries. We aren’t going out of business, so your content on SHAREOK won’t go away either.
Consideration #2: You Might Be Breaking the Law
Consideration #3: Understand the Privacy Implications
Finally, some of these sites’ tactics are troubling from the standpoint of privacy and intellectual freedom. Personally & professionally, many find it distressing that a private company, which doesn’t adhere khổng lồ the same professional ethics as librarians & other scholars bởi, collects information about who is reading what. Academia.edu, in particular, then offers khổng lồ tóm tắt that information with you if you subscribe to lớn their “premium service.” And while their analytics dashboard doesn’t reveal readers’ names, it may provide enough information for you lớn know exactly who read your work.You may decide not to pay for Academia.edu’s premium service, but even so – what you view and download will still be tracked. This may not be troubling to you (the “I’m not doing anything wrong, so I don’t care” argument), but we think it sets a bad precedent. What about tracking researchers who study terrorism? Or whistleblowing? Or even climate change? How might people at these academic social truyền thông companies create profiles & make judgments about you based on what you are reading? And what will they vì with the information they collect, especially if asked for it by government entities?We’ve posted some additional reading and resources below. And we will continue lớn cover some of these topics in the future, since they are highly relevant to sharing scholarly work. If you’re still interested in Academia.edu and/or ResearchGate after reading these articles, we’ve gone ahead & included those activities further down below. We’ve sầu purposefully kept these activities brief, at least for now.Make Profiles on Academia.edu and ResearchGate
You know all those things you wish your CV was smart enough khổng lồ vị – embed your papers, automatically give sầu you readership statistics, and so on? Academia.edu và ResearchGate are two academic social networks that allow you lớn vày these things & then some.They’re also places where your some of your colleagues are spending their time. Actively participating on one or both networks may give you an opportunity to lớn have greater reach with other researchers. And getting your publications và presentations onkhổng lồ these sites legally will make it easier for others lớn encounter your work. They bởi this not only through the social network they help you build, but also by improving the tìm kiếm engine optimization (SEO) of your retìm kiếm, making you much more “Googleable.”Both platforms allow you to vị the following: Create a protệp tin that summarizes your researchUpload your publications, so others can find themFind và follow other researchers, so you can receive automatic updates on their new publicationsFind & read others’ publicationsSee platform-specific metrics that indicate the readership và reach you have on those sitesLet’s dig into lớn the basics of setting up profiles và uploading your work on these sites.Bạn đang xem: Academia.edu là gì
Getting Started on Academia.edu
Logon to Academia.edu. If you’re a firm believer in keeping your professional online presence separate from your personal one, you’ll likely want khổng lồ sign up using your OU email address. Otherwise, you can sign up using your Facebook or Google profile. From here, you’ll be directed through the basic signup process.

If you can post your article (or your preprint or postprint), upload it to lớn Academia.edu by clicking the green “Upload” button near the top of the window and navigating khổng lồ the publication you want to lớn upload.Once it’s uploaded, hit the big xanh “Continue” button, và you’ll be asked if you’re uploading a published or unpublished work. The title of your publication will then be automatically extracted. Make any corrections necessary to the title, and add co-authors & an abstract. lưu ý that if your co-authors aren’t already on Academia.edu, the only way lớn add them is to provide their email address và Academia.edu will send them an invitation lớn join the site. Add “retìm kiếm interests,” which are keyword that will help others find your publication. Select the type of publication from the drop down thực đơn, and then clichồng “Save & Finish.” From there you’ll be taken lớn a full-page ad asking if you’d like lớn tăng cấp khổng lồ the Premium version of Academia.edu.

Fill Out Your Profile
Now it’s time khổng lồ add your OU affiliation & interests khổng lồ your protệp tin. Adding an OU affiliation will add you to a subtên miền of Academia.edu which will allow you to lớn more easily find your colleagues. The site will try to guess your affiliation based on your email address or IP address; make any corrections needed và add your department information & title.Then, add your research interests. These are also important; they’ll help others find you and your work.Xem thêm: Jobs Trợ Lý Kinh Doanh Tiếng Anh Là Gì, Kiến Thức Cần Biết Về Nghề Sale Assistant
Connect With Others
Now let’s connect with your colleagues who are already on Academia.edu. You can either connect your Facebook trương mục or an email trương mục to Academia.edu, which will tìm kiếm your contacts and suggest connections.You now have sầu an Academia.edu profile! You can continue khổng lồ spruce it up by adding more publications, as well as adding a photo of yourself, other retìm kiếm interests and publications, & connecting your Academia protệp tin lớn the other services we’ve covered lượt thích ORCiD, GoogleScholar, Twitter, and LinkedIn. See how this might be coming together?!?Academia.edu Homework

Make a Protệp tin on ResearchGate
Next, we’ll help you with the other major player in the scholarly social network space, ResearchGate. ResearchGate claims 15 million users, & it will help you connect with many researchers who aren’t on Academia.edu. It can also help you understand your readers through platform-specific metrics, and confirm your status as a helpful expert in your field with their “Q&A” feature.Given ResearchGate’s similarity to Academia.edu, we won’t rehash the basics of setting up a protệp tin and getting your publications online. Go ahead và sign up, phối up your trương mục (remember to lớn add detailed affiliation information & a photo), và add a publication or two.Got your basic profile up and running? Great! Let’s drill down into those three quality features of ResearchGate.Find other researchers & publications
Finding other researchers and publications on ResearchGate works a bit differently than on Academia.edu. ResearchGate automatically suggests retìm kiếm interests & connections for you based on who you’ve cited, who you follow và what discipline you selected when setting up your profile.Therefore, key to creating a robust network is uploading papers with citations khổng lồ be text-mined & searching for và following other researchers in your field. Until you’ve sầu done this, ResearchGate can be a bit of a struggle to lớn use effectively.Searching for other researchers in your field is easy: use the search bar at the top of the screen và type in your colleague’s name. Click on your colleague’s name in the tìm kiếm results lớn be taken lớn their profile, where you can explore their publications, co-authors, và so on, và also follow them lớn receive updates and suggestions for similar scholars. Here we’ve sầu searched for và found Carl Dahlman:ResearchGate also text-mines the publications you’ve uploaded khổng lồ find out who you’ve sầu cited. Using that information, they add both researchers you’ve sầu cited and those who have cited you lớn your network. Your network also includes colleagues from your department & institution. You can view & interact with your network down the right side of your profile page where you’ll see them broken up into: FollowingFollowersCited ByCitesTop co-authorsAgain, you must actively follow others and upload your work in order for your network to lớn appear in this way.
Cliông xã on the blue “Follow” khổng lồ follow a scholar whose work you already know. Or clichồng on the author’s name to be taken khổng lồ their profile. On the author’s profile you can explore their publications, & if you find an interesting one just click the paper title to lớn read the paper. This makes adding new colleague lớn your network a snap & finding new papers a breeze!