The Times Higher Education reports today that the ever-increasing amount of social networks aimed at academics wastes time and adds considerable pressure to update the “overwhelming number of digital academic communities, such as academia.edu, ResearchGate.net and Google Scholar, on which to maintain the impression of a successful and productive researcher.” It seems there is no clear winner as to which network is to be the Facebook of the academic world, and as such academics are having to spend time populating lots of different research profiles, hence there are now calls for one centralised profile. To some, everyday life feels like a never-ending battle to keep abreast of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and a host of other social networks. In addition, many universities have been forced into making their own online presence more user-friendly by adding features like search engines or even allowing students to create their own. Academics can add their research profile to the system and then sync it with other networks, such as Elsevier’s Scopus database.
The Times Higher Education reports today that the ever-increasing amount of social networks aimed at academics wastes time and adds considerable pressure to update the “overwhelming number of digital academic communities, such as academia.edu, ResearchGate.net and Google Scholar, on which to maintain the impression of a successful and productive researcher.” It seems there is no clear winner as to which network is to be the Facebook of the academic world, and as such academics are having to spend time populating lots of different research profiles, hence there are now calls for one centralised profile. In addition, many universities have been forced into making their own online presence more user-friendly by adding features like search engines or even allowing students to create their own. Academics can add their research profile to the system and then sync it with other networks, such as Elsevier’s Scopus database.