Scholars want peers to find—and cite—their research, and these days that increasingly happens on social media. The old adage ‘publish or perish’ could soon go digital as ‘clicks or canned.’
Several platforms have emerged over the past decade, offering researchers the chance to share their work and connect with other scholars. But some of those services have a bad rap from academics who say commercial sites lack the integrity of institutional repositories run by traditional universities. (Among the most widely-villified are ResearchGate and Academia.edu, which is evident by griping on social media and elsewhere.)
“The idea that some of these sites are for-profit raises questions about whether our work is really going to be available to the public, or if we’re doing it for free for a corporation,” says Fatima Espinoza Vasquez, assistant professor at the University of Kentucky’s School of Information Science. “It also raises copyright issues. Even though we own our work, researchers have to be very careful because academic journals often have specific rules that about where you publish research.”
Vasquez, who co-authored a 2015 paper comparing services and tools offered by various academic social networks, says researchers must weigh the benefits and drawbacks of each. “They can be great tools to advance your research, especially social research,” she says. “But just like with Facebook or any other social network, we need to be aware of potential issues we might have with copyright or privacy.”
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