Guidelines for using social networking sites

ResearchGate and Academia are great places to meet people conducting similar research and to get feedback on your work. Follow these guidelines to make sure you stay within the law and understand their limitations.

On

Guidelines

It’s quite common for people to share their papers on ResearchGate and Academia. You can upload a copy of your own paper if

it is an early draft and it has not been accepted for publication
you have negotiated with the publisher to keep the copyright
you upload your final version (minus the publisher’s formatting)

If your paper has been accepted for publication, check the policies of individual journals using the SHERPA RoMEO tool from the see also section.

Remember that ResearchGate and Academia are profit-making organisations and you’re helping them to build a product.
Use both of these services as ‘shop windows’ – put basic information about yourself and list your key publications, rather than including everything.
Focus on the social networking aspect and use them to find others and increase your visibility.
These sites are introspective and don’t link easily to other research systems. Use these in conjunction with more community-driven enterprises such as ORCID.