If you're looking for a way to get in touch with academic peers, then Academia.edu is a site you'll find most interesting. Through this site, you'll be able to use the many advantages of social networking that allow academics from universities around the world to create profiles and make connections with their peers. It's also a great way for people who are doing research to find someone who might be involved in the same field, allowing for quicker data gathering. The linking feature is also amazing, with its tree-like structure. This makes it easy to see who's associated with whom.
One of its strengths for me, is the option of linking postgraduates (PG) as well as faculty. Some Schools at UB don't have sufficient PG profiles up on the web (our School doesn't have any PG profiles up) or still rely on paper-based ones in the digital age. Who has the time to physically pop over to Otago to check out what researchers are doing there when you can and should get that info online. Academia.edu is also a good way to make sure that your publication details are up-to-date quickly. You can include a link to the publisher or amazon.com, etc. to plug your monograph, not to mention update keywords (which act like meta tags when people search for you/your field/interests), and keep in touch with other researchers and their work (by 'following' them or making them 'contacts').
I'd be interested to hear what people think of Academia.edu, and I invite you to post your responses and experiences here in the comments section of this post.
http://www.academia.edu
No comments:
Post a Comment