Loyola Marymount University faculty utilizing academic social networking sites, such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu, to share their publications may soon receive take-down notices for publications violating copyright permissions. Luckily for LMU faculty, the William H. Hannon Library has a solution: Selected Works!
Why use Selected Works when I have a ResearchGate or Academia.edu profile?
ResearchGate and Academia.edu are academic social networking profiles. ResearchGate, for example, is considered “the Facebook” for scientists and researchers to connect with peers and share articles. There is no doubt of the popularity of these sites. ResearchGate boasts about their 13 million profiles and 100 million publications. Due to the its popularity, there is significant opportunity for collaboration and connecting with other researchers. However, ResearchGate and other academic social networking sites are commercial entities that can use your address book and personal data for non-academic purposes. ResearchGate is notorious for sending too many emails and spamming inboxes. ResearchGate will also charge users for premium services such as analytic reports about the usage of their articles. If you look into the fine print of Academia.edu, their terms of use allows them to make derivative work of articles you upload to your profile. They can make translations of your work and profit from your scholarship without notifying you. Authors should be able to share their work without having private companies use their work for profit.
Selected Works
Selected Works is an author profile for Loyola Marymount University faculty connected to Digital Commons. A Selected Works profile allows faculty to create an introductory statement, list research interests, honors and awards, and link to other websites or social media profiles. Users can add articles, books, syllabi, presentations, images, streaming media, and so much more.
Selected Works is not a social network platform, but researchers are still able to reach out to authors. For example, my profile helped me to connect with researchers from Harvard and the University of Melbourne after they read my conference presentations. It’s not the same connectivity as social networking sites, but Selected Works provides a digital professional research presence to connect with other researchers. Selected Works enables authors to share their research without handing over their Facebook friends list and personal data.
Through a Selected Works profile, faculty can retrieve reports to track the impact of their scholarship with detailed analytics and global download statistics. The analytics are so detailed authors can determine what universities, agencies, and companies have researchers downloading their scholarship. These reports can be exported for tenure and promotion reports. Unlike ResearchGate, these analytics are free for Loyola Marymount University faculty and staff.
While ResearchGate is being targeted by publishers for copyright infringement, Selected Works is integrated with Digital Commons, Loyola Marymount University’s institutional repository. We do our best to ensure works added to Digital Commons do not infringe on copyright agreements. If works are added to a Selected Works profile, William H. Hannon Library can seamlessly add these materials to Digital Commons for long-term preservation and access.
Are you interested in a Selected Works profile?
Starting a Selected Works profile is a breeze. Simply send your publications list to digitalcommons@lmu.edu. William H. Hannon Library will kickstart the creation of your profile. We save you hours of work by clearing the copyright permissions of your publications or contact publishers to ensure there is no copyright violations (unlike ResearchGate and Academia.edu). We add the works that you can legally post online and you maintain your profile.
View Loyola Marymount University’s Selected Work profile gallery: here.
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