Research metrics and publishing: Other profile and networking tools

There are many academic and professional networking sites which provide a platform to:

• Create a profile to increase the visibility and accessibility of your research output
• Generate citation metrics which indicate the reach of your work
• Share papers and follow colleagues or peers to view their research, identify potential collaborators and grow your network

Academia.edu is a for-profit company. It is an academic networking site that allows you to:

•     Create a profile that will appear in Google searches
•     Upload full-text publications (within copyright) that will be indexed by Google Scholar
•     Add your CV as well as presentations, blog posts, websites and other non-traditional research outputs
•     Nominate your research interests to customise your newsfeed and follow like-minded scholars
•     Access your analytics page that provides an overview of visitors and metrics on views

For examples see Monash University on Academia.edu

ResearchGate is a for-profit company. It provides a free social network for scientists in which you can:

• Create a detailed profile
• Upload full-text publications (within copyright), or upload work for comment or review
• Nominate your research expertise and endorse researchers in your network
• Follow scholars or topics, comment or review the work of others, and ask and answer research questions
• Track engagement with your work through citations or views, find who is reading your work and their country and institution.

SSRN is a global collaborative composed of 24 research networks which aims to make social science research rapidly available and to facilitate direct communication amongst authors and readers. SSRN is owned by Elsevier.

The SSRN eLibrary consists of two parts: an Abstract Database where you can upload your abstracts, and an Electronic Paper Collection where you can upload your full papers. Registered users can download these for free.

• Create a detailed Author Home Page
• Share your research publications (within copyright) - full text publications are indexed by Google Scholar
• Interact with others in your field of interest
• Access analytics such as the number of downloads and citations for your documents

Humanities Commons Network is a project of the office of scholarly communication at the Modern Language Association.
It's development was funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

•     a non-profit network for Humanities scholars
•     create a profile
•     share and discuss papers
•     also has an open access repository
•     promotes open access, open source research

Mendeley is a reference manager and an academic social network owned by Elsevier.

• Create a profile and showcase your work
• Store and organise your research, and share work (within copyright) publicly or privately
• Follow other members and create and participate in public and private groups
• Measure your article performance with a range of authoritative metrics, including downloads and citations

LinkedIn is a global, career and industry oriented, social networking service for all professionals. See also the related LinkedIn for Higher Ed Professionals. LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft.

Employers can post jobs and job seekers can post their CVs. LinkedIn profiles may be ranked highly in search engine results.

LinkedIn users include businesses and individuals who can create profiles and connections to others who may represent their real-world professional relationships.

Users can invite anyone to make a connection. It is recommended that users only accept connection requests from people that they know, or from those for which the connection may be mutually beneficial. ​

Twitter is a micro-blogging information network that allows users to send and read posts of up to 280 characters, known as “tweets”.

Both individuals and organisations use Twitter to communicate, network and keep up-to-date with their areas of interest. For researchers, Twitter can be used to:

•     'Follow' other Twitter users or entities to network, or stay up-to-date with news, events or breakthroughs
•     Easily access the discussions at conferences or events by following 'hashtags'
•     Promote and share your research outputs, projects or ideas via 'tweets'
•     Engage with other researchers via 'retweets' or responses to tweets

See a list of academic tweeters in your subject area.