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Research: Networking and Sharing Sites

Why use research networking and sharing sites?

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Federation University prides itself on facilitating innovative and integrated lifelong learning and seeks to support “impactful research that enable people and communities to prosper locally, regionally and globally” (Federation University Australia, 2020, p.2). To increase the likelihood of research having high quality impact it is important to effectively promote research through multiple networking and sharing platforms.   

Academics need to be their own brand ambassadors and promote themselves and their work to broad audiences to increase research impact. To increase your research's potential impact adopt a marketing strategy to make your research visible to particular audiences who are more likely to engage with your work. Similarly, it is beneficial to make your research accessible to a wider audience so it may be shared more broadly. 

When promoting your research consider the following steps (Clarke, 2017):

  • Put together a marketing strategy to identify key audiences for your research
  • Write a 'plain-English' summary of your work for sharing
  • Make your data available via research networking and sharing sites (subject to copyright)
  • Post on social media and/or start a blog
  • Use your university research office to utilise their networks
  • Register for an ORCID ID
  • Share through Federation.figshare
  • Make your research open, apply with creative commons licence
  • Link to your research
  • Use unique identifiers when sharing your research more widely

Copyright

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It is important to remember when dealing with networking/sharing platforms such as ResearchGate/Academia that all the normal rules of copyright still apply. How a researcher may use ResearchGate will depend on what agreement or licence the researcher has with their publisher.

Researchers can check publisher's policies via Sherpa - This site will indicate which version of the work you can load and if there is an embargo period.

Research Networking Sites

 

File:Academia.edu logo.svg - Wikimedia Commons

With over 31 million academics and 22 million uploaded papers, Academia.edu is a global academic research sharing platform with extensive reach. Members can share research, build relationships with other academics, and grow their professional profile. Basic (free membership) gives access to full-text papers and networking features, a Premium (paid) subscription provides citation tracking and the ability to see who is reading your papers.

  1. Sign up to Academia.edu by clicking 'sign up with email', enter your name, email and password.
  2. Add your research publications to your profile.
  3. Follow people in your field to see their latest updates.

ResearchGate is social networking site designed for academics and scientists to connect with each other, share papers, find collaborators, access job boards, and ask and answer questions. ResearchGate has over 20 million members around the world with a particular focus on connecting and collaborating with colleagues, peers, co-authors and specialists.  

  1. Go to researchgate.net and click 'Join for free' and follow the prompts to set up your profile.
  2. Add your publications by clicking the 'add publications' button.
  3. Personalise your experience by selecting topics to follow.

Be aware that ResearchGate can send you many emails, so it is suggested you customise your email notifications. 

 

Access the ResearchGate Help Center to find out how to:

 

Limitations to Academia.edu & ResearchGate

Both Academia.edu and ResearchGate have valuable networking capabilities, yet it is important to be mindful of their limitations.   

  • Sharing your research to networking and sharing sites does not meet your institutional or funder obligations  
  • Both sites pose the potential of breaching copyright, be sure to read the fine print carefully. 
  • Any uploaded content is not guaranteed to be preserved into the future.
  • Both sites are known to send large amounts of spam emails
  • Personal details may be used by the sites for other purposes 

 

Federation ResearchOnline

Federation Library encourages all researchers to consider submitting work to Federation ResearchOnline, the University's institutional open access digital research repository.

The aim of  Federation ResearchOnline is to promote, store and provide open access to the research and scholarly output of University staff, students and affiliates.

 

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Researcher Profiles

The Lens

The Lens is a not-for-profit, open access global patent and scholarly knowledge resource with over 197 million scholar records. 

The Lens offers free profiles for all authors and inventors, with the capacity to record authorship of scholarly works within the database and the ability to link to your ORCID account.

As a discovery tool The Lens has comprehensive advanced search capacities and data visualisation capacities, making it increasingly popular among academics to find research and data. 

The platform's vast reach and growing popularity has seen many academics create user profiles to promote their research output and build connections with other likeminded researchers. 

 

Google Scholar Logo 2019

Google Scholar is a widely used platform for searching scholarly literature, showing citations to reports, articles, online books and other relevant material. 

Researchers can create a Google scholar profile which allows academics to track who is citing their articles, graph citations over time and compute citation metrics (Google Scholar, 2021). Google Scholar profiles can also be made public so they may be available in author searches on the platform.

Social Media

 

Twitter Logo PNG, Free Transparent Twitter Icon - Free Transparent PNG Logos

Twitter is a popular social media platform that can be beneficial before and after publishing any papers, giving researchers the ability to connect with other academics, crowdsource ideas, and promote articles to increase downloads, citations and ultimately impact. Unlike Academica.edu and ResearchGate, Twitter is not dedicated to research which can create more opportunities to promote research beyond traditional circles if used in a directed way. 

The 280-character limit and use of hashtags to allow users to find related content are defining features of Twitter and creates a less formal, more accessible way of communicating to mass audiences.   

 

linkedin logo transparent - Paperless Lab Academy

 

LinkedIn is a business oriented social network, allowing professionals around the world to connect with each other. The platform has a wide audience with close to 740 million members across 200 countries (LinkedIn, 2021). For researchers, LinkedIn is a valuable site for networking with other academics, finding and recruiting participants for research, creating discussion boards, and joining research specific groups to promote work. 

Networking Site Comparisons

  Federation 
ResearchOnline 		 ResearchGate  Academia.edu  Google Scholar
Citations		 ORCID        
Author profile page  Over 90 Free Check Mark Vectors - Pixabay - Pixabay Over 90 Free Check Mark Vectors - Pixabay - Pixabay Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green
Author disambiguation  Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green
Publication lists  Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green
Ability to add publications manually  Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green
Publication metrics  Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green
Ability to upload papers  Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Cross, Delete, Remove, Cancel, Abort, Red, Reject, Tick Cross, Delete, Remove, Cancel, Abort, Red, Reject, Tick
Long-term preservation  Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Cross, Delete, Remove, Cancel, Abort, Red, Reject, Tick Cross, Delete, Remove, Cancel, Abort, Red, Reject, Tick Cross, Delete, Remove, Cancel, Abort, Red, Reject, Tick Cross, Delete, Remove, Cancel, Abort, Red, Reject, Tick
Supports export or harvesting  Cross, Delete, Remove, Cancel, Abort, Red, Reject, Tick Cross, Delete, Remove, Cancel, Abort, Red, Reject, Tick
Send you lots of emails/notifications (by default)  Cross, Delete, Remove, Cancel, Abort, Red, Reject, Tick Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green
Comply with funding Open Access requirements  Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Cross, Delete, Remove, Cancel, Abort, Red, Reject, Tick Cross, Delete, Remove, Cancel, Abort, Red, Reject, Tick
Comply with Federation University reporting requirements Check Mark, Tick Mark, Check, Correct, Ok, Yes, Green Cross, Delete, Remove, Cancel, Abort, Red, Reject, Tick Cross, Delete, Remove, Cancel, Abort, Red, Reject, Tick

Table adapted from University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) and University of Melbourne 

References

 

Clark, J. (2017, October 18). 10 tips for promoting your research online. Research in progress blog. https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2017/10/18/10-tips-for-promoting-your-research-online/

Federation University. (2020). Federation University Australia Strategic Plan 2021 – 2025. https://federation.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/506868/Federation-Strategic-Plan-2021-2025-FINAL.pdf

Google Scholar. (2021). About. https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html

LinkedIn. (2021). About Us. https://about.linkedin.com/

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