Can I Upload My Portal Libraries and the Academy Article to Academia.edu

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Nosotros'll be honest – we thought long and hard almost including this chapter and its activities in the OU Affect Claiming. Academia.edu and ResearchGate both seem attractive to scholars, but they likewise have their share of disadvantages and downsides.

Ultimately, nosotros decided to include this information, considering then many of you at OU have accounts on these ii sites. A quick search turns up 3,849 OU-affiliated users on Academia.edu and iv,731 on ResearchGate! But instead of diving right into the "how tos," we recall it's especially of import to place these two sites into context and preface them with important considerations.

Consideration #1: You Are Not the Client

Similar to many of the other bookish social networks we cover in the OU Impact Challenge, you are not the customer when you interact with these companies, even though yous may feel like ane. Instead, you lot are the production that these services seek to monetize and/or "offer up" to advertisers. We don't error businesses for making money; that is the imperative for them to exist. Only we also come across Academia.edu and ResearchGate every bit an extension of those who monetize what many scholars believe should be freely shared.

Chiefly, if these companies are bought, sold, or go out of concern, what would happen to the content you've placed in that location? This is one reason why it is appropriate to offset upload items you want to share – articles, preprints, postprints, conference posters, proceedings, slide decks, lesson plans, etc. – to SHAREOK (which we'll be covering in Chapter 12 of the OU Affect Claiming). Librarians maintain an OU Faculty/Staff Collection and a Graduate Student Collection in SHAREOK where you can deposit your work. The items in SHAREOK are indexed past Google and Google Scholar, so they are searchable, findable, and downloadable by researchers around the earth. OU librarians maintain the platform, the content, and the links. Near importantly, maintaining and preserving content is one of the cadre 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 Exist Breaking the Law

Another consideration with these particular services is the legality of uploading your work there. Nearly publishers require authors to sign a publication agreement/copyright transfer prior to a manuscript existence published which outlines what you lot tin/cannot do with your own work in the time to come (nosotros will cover this in Chapter 11 of the OU Touch Challenge). Uploading your work – especially a publisher's pdf – to a site such as Academia.edu or ResearchGate may exist a violation of the terms of the publishing agreement, whereas uploading information technology to an institutional repository may not be (or tin can be negotiated not to be). Several years ago, a major academic publisher actively went after Academia.edu, requiring them to take down all of the publisher'south content that had been illegally uploaded, much to the surprise and dismay of these authors. And Academia.edu is not the just target. Earlier this twelvemonth ResearchGate was prepare to take down nearly seven million articles or about 40% of their content.

Consideration #3: Understand the Privacy Implications

Finally, some of these sites' tactics are troubling from the standpoint of privacy and intellectual freedom. Personally and professionally, many detect it sad that a private company, which doesn't adhere to the aforementioned professional ethics as librarians and other scholars do, collects information near who is reading what. Academia.edu, in particular, so offers to share that information with yous if yous subscribe to their "premium service." And while their analytics dashboard doesn't reveal readers' names, information technology may provide plenty information for you to know exactly who read your work.

Yous may make up one's mind not to pay for Academia.edu'southward premium service, but fifty-fifty and so – what y'all view and download will however exist tracked. This may not be troubling to you (the "I'one thousand not doing anything wrong, and then I don't intendance" argument), simply we think it sets a bad precedent. What nigh tracking researchers who written report terrorism? Or whistleblowing? Or even climate modify? How might people at these academic social media companies create profiles and make judgments almost yous based on what you are reading? And what will they practice with the data they collect, especially if asked for it by government entities?

We've posted some additional reading and resources beneath. And nosotros will continue to encompass 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 manufactures, we've gone alee and included those activities further downwardly below. We've purposefully kept these activities brief, at least for now.

A Social Networking Site is Not an Open Access Repository, by Katie Fortney and Justin Gonder
I Have a Lot of Questions: RG, ELS, SN, STM, and CRS, by Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
Dear Scholars, Delete Your Business relationship At Academia.Edu, by Sarah Bond
Academia, Not Edu, by Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Reading, Privacy, and Scholarly Networks, past Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Upon Leaving Academia.edu, past G. Geltner
Should Yous #DeleteAcademiaEdu, past Paolo Mangiafico
Should This Be the Terminal Affair You Read on Academia.edu?, by Gary Hall (downloads as a .pdf)

Make Profiles on Academia.edu and ResearchGate

You know all those things you lot wish your CV was smart plenty to exercise – embed your papers, automatically give you readership statistics, then on? Academia.edu and ResearchGate are two academic social networks that allow you to do these things then some.

They're likewise places where your some of your colleagues are spending their time. Actively participating on 1 or both networks may give you an opportunity to have greater reach with other researchers. And getting your publications and presentations onto these sites legally volition make information technology easier for others to encounter your work. They do this not only through the social network they help y'all build, but also by improving the search engine optimization (SEO) of your inquiry, making you much more than "Googleable."

Both platforms allow y'all to do the post-obit:

Create a contour that summarizes your research
Upload your publications, so others can observe them
Find and follow other researchers, so you lot can receive automated updates on their new publications
Find and read others' publications
Run into platform-specific metrics that bespeak the readership and reach you lot have on those sites

Let's dig into the basics of setting upwards profiles and uploading your work on these sites.

Getting Started on Academia.edu

Logon to Academia.edu. If you're a firm believer in keeping your professional online presence divide from your personal 1, you lot'll probable desire to sign upward using your OU email address. Otherwise, you tin sign up using your Facebook or Google contour. From hither, you lot'll exist directed through the bones signup procedure.

First up: posting a publication or 2. How do you cull what to share? If you're an established scholar, this will be easy: only choose your about highly cited newspaper. If you're early in your career or a graduate educatee, choosing might be tougher. A peer-reviewed paper is always a good bet, as is a preprint or a presentation that's closely related to your most current topic of inquiry.

Got a paper in mind? Now comes the non-equally-fun-but-incredibly-necessary role: making sure y'all have the rights to post it. About authors don't realize that they by and large sign away their copyright when publishing an article with a traditional publisher. And that means yous may not have the rights to post the publisher's version of your article on Academia.edu. (If you negotiated to go along your copyright or published with an authors' rights-respecting periodical like PLOS Biological science, give yourself a pat on the back and skip the following paragraph.)

If you don't take copyright for your paper, all hope is not lost! You likely have the right to post some version of the article (often the unedited, unformatted version). Head over to SHERPA/RoMEO and look up the journal yous published in. You'll see whatever and all restrictions that the publisher has placed on how you can share your commodity. We'll be explaining more nearly SHERPA/RoMEO in Affiliate eleven, only luckily it's an easy enough tool to use before then.

If you can post your article (or your preprint or postprint), upload it to Academia.edu by clicking the green "Upload" button near the elevation of the window and navigating to the publication you want to upload.

Once information technology'south uploaded, striking the big blue "Go along" button, and y'all'll be asked if y'all're uploading a published or unpublished work. The championship of your publication will and so be automatically extracted. Make any corrections necessary to the championship, and add co-authors and an abstract. Annotation that if your co-authors aren't already on Academia.edu, the only fashion to add them is to provide their electronic mail accost and Academia.edu will send them an invitation to bring together the site. Add "research interests," which are keywords that will assist others find your publication. Select the type of publication from the drop down menu, and and then click "Salve and Finish." From in that location you'll exist taken to a total-page advert asking if you'd similar to upgrade to the Premium version of Academia.edu.

Fill up Out Your Profile

Now it's time to add your OU affiliation and interests to your profile. Adding an OU amalgamation volition add together you lot to a subdomain of Academia.edu which will allow you lot to more easily find your colleagues. The site will try to guess your affiliation based on your e-mail address or IP address; make whatsoever corrections needed and add your section information and championship.

Then, add together your research interests. These are also important; they'll help others notice you lot and your work.

Connect With Others

Now permit'southward connect with your colleagues who are already on Academia.edu. You tin either connect your Facebook account or an electronic mail account to Academia.edu, which will search your contacts and propose connections.

You now have an Academia.edu profile! You can continue to spruce information technology up past adding more publications, every bit well as adding a photo of yourself, other inquiry interests and publications, and connecting your Academia profile to the other services nosotros've covered similar ORCiD, GoogleScholar, Twitter, and LinkedIn. See how this might exist meeting?!?

Academia.edu Homework

Now that you have a profile, gear up aside half an 60 minutes to explore two uses of Academia.edu:

Exploring "enquiry interests" in lodge to discover other researchers and publications; and
Getting more than of your most important publications online; and

Research interests: On your profile page, only your first research involvement is visible (followed by a number in parenthesis, which represents how many additional research interests you take). Hover your mouse over your research interest to brand the others appear, and then click on one of them. You will be taken to a page with uploaded papers tagged with the aforementioned enquiry interest.

Towards the superlative of the page, notice you lot're on the "Papers" view. At that place'southward besides a "People" view that will take you to the profiles of scholars with similar interests. For the search results that appear, have some time to explore the profiles and papers of others who share your interest(southward) and follow anyone that looks interesting.

We're willing to bet y'all'll observe scholars and papers that you weren't aware of before. You can likewise utilize the Academia.edu search to look for research interests outside of the ones you've got listed in your contour and explore those search results too.

Upload more than papers & presentations: click the "Upload papers" tab at the top right corner of your screen and upload at least ii more papers or presentations that you recollect are worthy of attending. Remember to abide past any copyright restrictions that might exist, and also be sure to add as much descriptive data every bit possible, which will make information technology easier for others to find.

Make a Profile on ResearchGate

Adjacent, nosotros'll assist you with the other major player in the scholarly social network infinite, ResearchGate. ResearchGate claims 15 meg users, and it will assist yous connect with many researchers who aren't on Academia.edu. It can likewise aid y'all empathise your readers through platform-specific metrics, and confirm your status as a helpful adept in your field with their "Q&A" feature.

Given ResearchGate's similarity to Academia.edu, nosotros won't rehash the basics of setting upwards a profile and getting your publications online. Go ahead and sign upwards, ready your account (call back to add together detailed affiliation information and a photo), and add a publication or two.

Got your bones profile up and running? Great! Let's drill downward into those iii unique 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 enquiry interests and connections for you based on who you've cited, who you follow and what discipline you selected when setting up your contour.

Therefore, key to creating a robust network is uploading papers with citations to exist text-mined and searching for and following other researchers in your field. Until you've done this, ResearchGate tin exist a bit of a struggle to use finer.

Searching for other researchers in your field is piece of cake: utilize the search bar at the meridian of the screen and type in your colleague'due south proper name. Click on your colleague'south name in the search results to exist taken to their profile, where you can explore their publications, co-authors, and then on, and besides follow them to receive updates and suggestions for like scholars. Here we've searched for and establish Carl Dahlman:

ResearchGate also text-mines the publications y'all've uploaded to find out who yous've cited. Using that information, they add both researchers you lot've cited and those who accept cited yous to your network. Your network also includes colleagues from your department and establishment. You can view and collaborate with your network down the correct side of your profile page where you'll come across them cleaved up into:

Post-obit
Followers
Cited By
Cites
Summit co-authors

Again, you must actively follow others and upload your piece of work in society for your network to appear in this way.

Click on the blueish "Follow" to follow a scholar whose piece of work you already know. Or click on the writer's name to be taken to their profile. On the writer's profile you can explore their publications, and if yous find an interesting i just click the paper title to read the paper. This makes adding new colleague to your network a snap and finding new papers a breeze!

ResearchGate Score & Stats

If y'all're into metrics, the ResearchGate score and stats offer lots to explore. The ResearchGate score is an indicator of your engagement on the site: the more than publications and followers you have, plus the more questions you ask and answer, all add upwardly to your score. We'll utilise Carl Dahlman's contour equally an example again:

ResearchGate also helpfully provides a percentile (seen above on the right-manus side), so you know how a score stacks upwards against other users on the site. The score isn't normalized past field, though, and then beware that using the score to compare yourself to others isn't recommended.

Some other downsides to exist aware of: ResearchGate scores don't accept into business relationship whether y'all're offset author on a paper, they weigh site participation much more than highly than other (more than important) indicators of your scientific prowess, and don't reflect the reality of who's a high-affect scientist in many fields. So, caveat emptor.

All that said, ResearchGate scores are fun to play around with and explore. Only be certain non to take them too seriously.

The ResearchGate stats (viewable only on your ain profile page when y'all are logged in) are also illuminating: they tell you how often your publications take been viewed and cited on ResearchGate (recently and over time), what your top publications are, and the popularity of your profile and whatsoever questions y'all may accept asked on the site'south Q&A section.

A similar caveat: similar Academia.edu stats, ResearchGate stats are simply for content hosted on ResearchGate, so it tin't tell you lot much virtually readership or citations of your work that's hosted on other platforms. And since it's probable that your entire field isn't active on ResearchGate that means ResearchGate stats aren't representative of your total bear on.

Limitations

We've covered many of the limitations of Academia.edu and ResearchGate in the beginning section of this chapter. But there is nevertheless some other one. It has been pointed out that Academia.edu and ResearchGate are information silos – yous put data and try into the site, merely you can't easily extract and reuse it later. This is admittedly right. That'south a big downside of these services and a nifty reason to make sure y'all've claimed your ORCiD in Chapter 1.

Ane solution to this drawback (and the ones mentioned in a higher place) is to limit the corporeality of time you lot spend calculation new content to your profiles on these sites, and instead use them as a kind of "landing page" that can simply aid others find you lot and 3 or four of your nigh important publications. Even if you lot don't accept all your publications on either site, their social networking features may even so be useful to make connections and increase readership for your most important piece of work.

ResearchGate Homework

Ready up your ResearchGate profile and add at to the lowest degree iii publications you remember deserve attention. Next, search for at least 5 colleagues or well-known scholars in your field and follow each of them. Once you've established a network, take 10 minutes to explore them and their publications.

Next, endeavour out a broader search in ResearchGate past searching for a key word in your field of study. Beneath, we searched for "ocean acoustic environment" and found researchers, publications, projects, questions, and more than:

For improve or worse, you've now claimed your professional presence on two of academia'due south biggest social networks and learned how to use them to discover other researchers and publications. More chiefly, you've optimized your contour so others tin find you and your enquiry more hands, thereby increasing potential exposure for you and your publications. You too have ii new sources of metrics that will give you another mode to show how oftentimes you're read and cited.

Whew! Pat yourself on the back if you made it this far!

Content for the OU Affect Claiming has been derived from "The 30-Solar day Bear on Claiming" by Stacy Konkiel © ImpactStory and used here under a CC BY four.0 International License.

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Source: https://libraries.ou.edu/content/understanding-academiaedu-and-researchgate