Add a Paper to Academia Without Uploading

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Nosotros'll be honest – nosotros thought long and hard about including this chapter and its activities in the OU Impact Challenge. Academia.edu and ResearchGate both seem attractive to scholars, simply they also have their share of disadvantages and downsides.

Ultimately, we decided to include this information, because so many of you at OU accept accounts on these two sites. A quick search turns up 3,849 OU-affiliated users on Academia.edu and 4,731 on ResearchGate! But instead of diving right into the "how tos," we think it's especially important to place these two sites into context and preface them with of import considerations.

Consideration #1: You Are Not the Customer

Similar to many of the other academic social networks we encompass in the OU Touch on Claiming, you lot are not the customer when yous interact with these companies, even though you may feel similar i. Instead, you lot are the product that these services seek to monetize and/or "offer up" to advertisers. We don't fault businesses for making coin; that is the imperative for them to exist. But we also see Academia.edu and ResearchGate every bit an extension of those who monetize what many scholars believe should be freely shared.

Importantly, if these companies are bought, sold, or go out of concern, what would happen to the content yous've placed at that place? This is one reason why it is advisable to first upload items you want to share – manufactures, preprints, postprints, conference posters, proceedings, slide decks, lesson plans, etc. – to SHAREOK (which we'll be roofing in Chapter 12 of the OU Impact Challenge). Librarians maintain an OU Faculty/Staff Drove and a Graduate Student Collection in SHAREOK where you lot tin can deposit your work. The items in SHAREOK are indexed past Google and Google Scholar, and so they are searchable, findable, and downloadable past researchers around the globe. OU librarians maintain the platform, the content, and the links. Most importantly, maintaining and preserving content is 1 of the core missions of the OU Libraries. Nosotros aren't going out of business, so your content on SHAREOK won't get away either.

Consideration #2: Y'all Might Exist Breaking the Police force

Another consideration with these particular services is the legality of uploading your piece of work there. Virtually publishers require authors to sign a publication understanding/copyright transfer prior to a manuscript beingness published which outlines what you tin can/cannot exercise with your own work in the future (we volition cover this in Chapter xi of the OU Impact Challenge). Uploading your piece of work – especially a publisher'southward pdf – to a site such every bit Academia.edu or ResearchGate may be a violation of the terms of the publishing agreement, whereas uploading information technology to an institutional repository may not exist (or tin can be negotiated not to be). Several years ago, a major academic publisher actively went afterwards Academia.edu, requiring them to have down all of the publisher'due south content that had been illegally uploaded, much to the surprise and dismay of these authors. And Academia.edu is not the simply target. Earlier this twelvemonth ResearchGate was set to take downwards nearly 7 million articles or well-nigh 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 find it distressing that a individual company, which doesn't adhere to the same professional ideals as librarians and other scholars practise, collects information about who is reading what. Academia.edu, in item, then offers to share that information with you if you subscribe to their "premium service." And while their analytics dashboard doesn't reveal readers' names, it may provide enough information for yous to know exactly who read your piece of work.

Yous may determine not to pay for Academia.edu's premium service, only all the same – what you view and download will still be tracked. This may non be troubling to you (the "I'm non doing anything incorrect, so I don't intendance" argument), just 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 bookish social media companies create profiles and make judgments about you based on what y'all are reading? And what volition they practise with the information they collect, especially if asked for it past government entities?

We've posted some additional reading and resource beneath. And we will go along to cover some of these topics in the future, since they are highly relevant to sharing scholarly work. If you're nonetheless interested in Academia.edu and/or ResearchGate after reading these articles, we've gone ahead and included those activities further downward below. We've purposefully kept these activities brief, at to the lowest degree for now.

A Social Networking Site is Not an Open up Admission 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 Account At Academia.Edu, past Sarah Bond
Academia, Not Edu, by Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Reading, Privacy, and Scholarly Networks, by Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Upon Leaving Academia.edu, past Yard. Geltner
Should You #DeleteAcademiaEdu, by Paolo Mangiafico
Should This Be the Terminal Matter Yous Read on Academia.edu?, by Gary Hall (downloads as a .pdf)

Make Profiles on Academia.edu and ResearchGate

You lot know all those things y'all wish your CV was smart enough to do – embed your papers, automatically give you readership statistics, and so on? Academia.edu and ResearchGate are two bookish social networks that allow yous to practise these things and then some.

They're as well places where your some of your colleagues are spending their fourth dimension. Actively participating on one or both networks may give you an opportunity to take greater reach with other researchers. And getting your publications and presentations onto these sites legally will make it easier for others to encounter your work. They do this not only through the social network they help you build, but besides past improving the search engine optimization (SEO) of your enquiry, making you much more "Googleable."

Both platforms allow you to do the post-obit:

Create a profile that summarizes your inquiry
Upload your publications, so others can detect them
Find and follow other researchers, and so you can receive automatic updates on their new publications
Find and read others' publications
Meet platform-specific metrics that indicate the readership and achieve you have on those sites

Permit'due south dig into the basics of setting upward profiles and uploading your work on these sites.

Getting Started on Academia.edu

Logon to Academia.edu. If you're a firm laic in keeping your professional person online presence split up from your personal 1, y'all'll likely want to sign up using your OU electronic mail address. Otherwise, you lot can sign up using your Facebook or Google contour. From hither, y'all'll be directed through the basic signup process.

Start up: posting a publication or 2. How practice you cull what to share? If y'all're an established scholar, this will be easy: just cull your well-nigh highly cited paper. If you lot're early in your career or a graduate educatee, choosing might exist tougher. A peer-reviewed paper is ever a good bet, as is a preprint or a presentation that'due south closely related to your most current topic of research.

Got a paper in listen? Now comes the non-equally-fun-but-incredibly-necessary office: making sure y'all take the rights to mail service it. Most authors don't realize that they mostly sign away their copyright when publishing an commodity with a traditional publisher. And that means you may not accept the rights to post the publisher's version of your commodity on Academia.edu. (If y'all negotiated to keep your copyright or published with an authors' rights-respecting journal like PLOS Biology, give yourself a pat on the back and skip the post-obit paragraph.)

If yous don't have copyright for your newspaper, all promise is non lost! You likely accept the right to postal service some version of the commodity (oft the unedited, unformatted version). Head over to SHERPA/RoMEO and look up the journal you published in. You'll see any and all restrictions that the publisher has placed on how you can share your article. We'll exist explaining more about SHERPA/RoMEO in Chapter eleven, just luckily it'south an easy plenty tool to use before then.

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

Once it's uploaded, hitting the large blue "Continue" button, and yous'll be asked if you're uploading a published or unpublished work. The title of your publication will and then be automatically extracted. Make whatsoever corrections necessary to the title, and add co-authors and an abstract. Note that if your co-authors aren't already on Academia.edu, the but style to add them is to provide their e-mail accost and Academia.edu will send them an invitation to join the site. Add together "research interests," which are keywords that will help others find your publication. Select the type of publication from the drop down bill of fare, and then click "Save and Finish." From there yous'll be taken to a full-page ad asking if you'd like to upgrade to the Premium version of Academia.edu.

Fill Out Your Profile

Now it's fourth dimension to add your OU affiliation and interests to your profile. Adding an OU affiliation will add y'all to a subdomain of Academia.edu which volition allow you to more hands discover your colleagues. The site will try to guess your affiliation based on your email address or IP address; brand any corrections needed and add your department information and title.

Then, add your enquiry interests. These are also important; they'll assist others find y'all and your work.

Connect With Others

Now permit's connect with your colleagues who are already on Academia.edu. You can either connect your Facebook business relationship or an e-mail business relationship to Academia.edu, which will search your contacts and advise connections.

You lot now have an Academia.edu profile! You can go on to spruce it upwards by adding more publications, likewise as adding a photo of yourself, other research interests and publications, and connecting your Academia profile to the other services we've covered like ORCiD, GoogleScholar, Twitter, and LinkedIn. See how this might exist meeting?!?

Academia.edu Homework

Now that you have a contour, prepare aside half an hour to explore two uses of Academia.edu:

Exploring "research interests" in society to discover other researchers and publications; and
Getting more than of your well-nigh important publications online; and

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

Towards the top of the folio, observe y'all're on the "Papers" view. In that location's also a "People" view that will have you to the profiles of scholars with similar interests. For the search results that announced, have some fourth dimension to explore the profiles and papers of others who share your interest(s) and follow anyone that looks interesting.

We're willing to bet you'll notice scholars and papers that y'all weren't aware of before. You can also use the Academia.edu search to look for research interests outside of the ones you lot've got listed in your profile 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 two more papers or presentations that you think are worthy of attention. Retrieve to bide past whatsoever copyright restrictions that might exist, and likewise be sure to add as much descriptive information equally possible, which volition make it easier for others to find.

Brand a Profile on ResearchGate

Side by side, nosotros'll assist you with the other major player in the scholarly social network space, ResearchGate. ResearchGate claims fifteen million users, and information technology volition help you connect with many researchers who aren't on Academia.edu. It can besides help you understand your readers through platform-specific metrics, and confirm your status as a helpful good in your field with their "Q&A" characteristic.

Given ResearchGate's similarity to Academia.edu, we won't rehash the basics of setting up a profile and getting your publications online. Go alee and sign upward, set up your business relationship (recall to add together detailed affiliation information and a photograph), and add a publication or ii.

Got your basic contour upward and running? Great! Allow's drill down into those 3 unique features of ResearchGate.

Find other researchers & publications

Finding other researchers and publications on ResearchGate works a flake differently than on Academia.edu. ResearchGate automatically suggests research interests and connections for yous based on who y'all've cited, who you follow and what discipline you selected when setting upwards your profile.

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 yous've washed this, ResearchGate tin can exist a bit of a struggle to use effectively.

Searching for other researchers in your field is easy: use the search bar at the elevation of the screen and blazon in your colleague's name. Click on your colleague's proper noun in the search results to be taken to their profile, where you lot can explore their publications, co-authors, and so on, and also follow them to receive updates and suggestions for similar scholars. Hither nosotros've searched for and found Carl Dahlman:

ResearchGate also text-mines the publications you've uploaded to find out who yous've cited. Using that data, they add together both researchers you lot've cited and those who have cited you to your network. Your network also includes colleagues from your department and establishment. You can view and interact with your network downwards the correct side of your profile page where you'll see them broken up into:

Following
Followers
Cited By
Cites
Superlative co-authors

Once more, you must actively follow others and upload your work in order for your network to appear in this way.

Click on the bluish "Follow" to follow a scholar whose work you lot already know. Or click on the writer'southward name to be taken to their contour. On the author's profile you can explore their publications, and if you find an interesting one but click the newspaper 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 yous'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 publications and followers you have, plus the more questions you inquire and answer, all add upward to your score. We'll utilize Carl Dahlman'southward profile as an example again:

ResearchGate also helpfully provides a percentile (seen in a higher place on the correct-hand side), so you know how a score stacks up against other users on the site. The score isn't normalized by field, though, so beware that using the score to compare yourself to others isn't recommended.

Some other downsides to be aware of: ResearchGate scores don't accept into account whether you're get-go author on a newspaper, they weigh site participation much more than highly than other (more important) indicators of your scientific prowess, and don't reflect the reality of who's a high-impact scientist in many fields. So, caveat emptor.

All that said, ResearchGate scores are fun to play effectually with and explore. Only be sure not to have them too seriously.

The ResearchGate stats (viewable simply on your own contour page when you are logged in) are also illuminating: they tell you how often your publications accept been viewed and cited on ResearchGate (recently and over time), what your top publications are, and the popularity of your profile and any questions you may have asked on the site's Q&A section.

A similar caveat: like Academia.edu stats, ResearchGate stats are only for content hosted on ResearchGate, so it can't tell you much most readership or citations of your work that's hosted on other platforms. And since it's likely that your entire field isn't active on ResearchGate that means ResearchGate stats aren't representative of your full impact.

Limitations

We've covered many of the limitations of Academia.edu and ResearchGate in the first department of this affiliate. But at that place is nonetheless another one. It has been pointed out that Academia.edu and ResearchGate are information silos – you lot put information and effort into the site, but you tin't easily excerpt and reuse it later. This is absolutely correct. That's a large downside of these services and a great reason to make sure you've claimed your ORCiD in Affiliate ane.

One solution to this drawback (and the ones mentioned above) is to limit the corporeality of time yous spend calculation new content to your profiles on these sites, and instead use them as a kind of "landing page" that can simply assist others notice you and three or four of your virtually important publications. Fifty-fifty if yous don't accept all your publications on either site, their social networking features may all the same exist useful to make connections and increase readership for your about important piece of work.

ResearchGate Homework

Gear up your ResearchGate contour and add together at least iii publications you retrieve deserve attention. Next, search for at to the lowest degree five colleagues or well-known scholars in your field and follow each of them. Once you've established a network, have 10 minutes to explore them and their publications.

Side by side, try out a broader search in ResearchGate by searching for a key word in your field of study. Below, we searched for "ocean acoustic environment" and found researchers, publications, projects, questions, and more than:

For better or worse, y'all've at present claimed your professional presence on two of academia's biggest social networks and learned how to use them to discover other researchers and publications. More chiefly, you've optimized your profile so others can detect you and your research more than easily, thereby increasing potential exposure for you lot and your publications. Y'all likewise have two new sources of metrics that will give you another way to show how frequently y'all're read and cited.

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

Content for the OU Impact Challenge has been derived from "The xxx-Day Touch Challenge" by Stacy Konkiel © ImpactStory and used here under a CC Past 4.0 International License.

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