Thing 6 - Managing Your Online Research Networks

As an alternative to blogging and tweeting about research, online social or professional research network sites are excellent for collaboration.

LinkedIn is the profile platform that suits my personal needs. I agree with some of the other bloggers/commenters that it would be considered as an online CV platform, but I find that its a great platform to keep up-to-date with trends in your community, participating in interest group forums where researchers can use the space to spruke views, discussions and ideas on their papers/ research. There could be instances where the researchers could add their publications on their LinkedIn profile. I am aware of instances where researchers link directly to their publications, or even directly to their chosen research collection platform to boost their discovery. For example:


Hence I believe LinkedIn is a great research networking and current awareness tool.





Academia.edu I have come across to acces open access papers, but also weary about the privacy and security features of the site as some others have mentioned. Recently, in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, (29th January 2016) this platform was criticised for its marketting ploy to charge authors for a fee for each time their articles were recommended. Check out http://bit.ly/1NN7cEO. 
It was stated that "In fact, the controversy has led some Twitter users to cite the hashtag #DeleteAcademiaEdu and post messages that they were deactivating their accounts."


 I think that researchers need to establish which of the profile platforms is best suited and accessed by other researchers in the field. The danger is that it could be a niche field of research, hence may have a niche platform to collaborate and promote their research.

I think that the motivation behind managing your presence on any particular research  network / platform is how you view the importance of research community engagement.