If you’re considering self-archiving your scholarly work, the natural follow-up question is “Where?” Several services exist that offer archiving and CV-like profiles for scholars. This blog post will examine a few of them, taking note in particular of whether they permit document-uploading, how automatic the CV-generation process is, the costs of the service, and a few of the metrics the service might provide.
ORCID
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a service that provides persistent, standardized identification for researchers and their scholarly contributions. The primary benefit of an ORCID account is a 16-digit persistent ID, which attaches to a scholar independent of their past, current, or future affiliations.
Through use of the PID, journals, universities, and others can link to the scholar’s ORCID profile. That profile reads like a CV with lists of appointments, fellowships, papers, and other common elements, but unlike most of services in this post, ORCID does not itself host document uploads though the profile may be used to link to open access versions of a work as easily as the version of record. Through ORCID’s partnership with DataCite, trusted organizations may automatically add references to an author’s profile, though the owner has full control over the visibility of work and their listed connections. Past work may be added to a profile in multiple ways, including automated methods with a DOI or PubMed number for the work.
ORCID is free for scholars. As a nonprofit corporate entity, ORCID is funded and governed by its member organizations, which includes universities, publishers, government agencies, commercial business, and more. This is why you’ll find ORCID integrated into many author and faculty profiles within these institutions’ web presences.
Document Upload: No.
Automated Feed: Yes.
Costs: Free.
Concerns: No document archiving.
ResearchGate
ResearchGate bills itself as a site to share work and connect with peers. A profile on ResearchGate resembles a combination of CV and resume with many fields that are common to posted job requirements such as languages and other skills. ResearchGate also provides statistical tools like an h-index, citation tracking, and a “research interest score”, and the site offers recommendations as a recruitment service might for improving visibility and interest.
Unlike ORCID, ResearchGate allows a profile to host downloadable copies of papers, and the site has repeatedly been criticized for allowing the violation of copyright. The site has also been criticized for automatically generating profiles for its members’ co-authors and for subscribing these non-members to promotional emails.
ResearchGate is a commercial enterprise, and though it’s been investor funded for most of its existence, the company has made clear it’s plan to transition to a profitable recruitment and marketing service akin to non-academic job listing services.
Although ResearchGate may be a useful tool for the academic job hunt, it’s not recommended for use as a repository as its frequent copyright violations threaten it’s long-term stability as a self-archiving tool. If you choose to use ResearchGate, it’s important that you self-archive elsewhere too.
Document Upload: Yes.
Automatic Feed: Co-authors may link to your profile.
Costs: Free for scholars.
Concerns: Copyright concerns over uploads.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar has a public profile option with CV-like features that allows you connect your papers alongside Scholar search results. After you’ve entered your name and affiliation, the sign-up process will automatically gather papers that the algorithm matches. You have the option to allow their algorithm to automatically add papers to your profile in the future or be emailed alerts when it identifies probable matches.
Google Scholar will link to PDF and HTML full text versions of your work that are hosted elsewhere, but they do not allow uploads. The works that can be added to a profile are limited by the types of materials that Google Scholar indexes, which means a large amount of academic effort will not be reflected. This means that Google Scholar can be used as a landing page to connect archived versions of your papers, but it fulfills neither of the needs of self-archiving nor CV-writing for the job hunt.
What Google does offer are citation metrics with the option to sign-up for alerts whenever the algorithm indexes a new work that cites one of your claimed papers. The metrics themselves are informative but quite limited in variety, from a statistical point of view. The FAQ mentions Google has no plans to expand them at this time.
Document Upload: No.
Automated Feed: Yes.
Costs: None.
Concerns: Limited metrics and scope of works.
Academia.edu
Despite it’s domain, Academia.edu is not affiliated with any university or other academic institution. It was grandfathered in before requirements were placed on the EDU domain. Like ResearchGate, Academia.edu is a social network with CV-like features to display affiliations and recently published work on a public profile.
Academia.edu’s funding is not subject to public disclosure, but it does operate as a “freemium” service with a paid tier that promises access to data and statistics on one’s profile. Academia.edu isn’t especially forthcoming about how this data is gathered or analyzed, and it’s pushes toward a subscription/promotional model have led to many calls to abandon the platform. As a social network, it’s user agreement empowers it to collect data for advertising and other purposes.
Academia.edu has been at the center of a number of controversies, including analytics-driven approach to open access and most recently for its Meta-like claims to own user data. For these reasons and its inability to demonstrate stability or permanency, the site isn’t recommended for self-archiving, though scholars may find it useful for social networking.
Document Upload: Yes.
Automated Feed: No.
Costs: Basic uses free; advanced metrics by subscription.
Concerns: Copyright issues with uploads; authors waive some rights.
Preprint Archives
A number of self-service preprint repositories have sprung up across the many fields and audiences. A partial list can be found on Wikipedia.
The classic example is ArXiv.org, which has been operating since 1991 and is funded in part by Cornell. ArXiv is popular in computer science, physics, and mathematics. Inspired by the ArXiv model, more recent repositories have sprung up for other fields, such as MedrXiv in medicine and BiorXiv in biology. Both of these are indexed by PubMed with warnings about the article’s preprint status.
Document Upload: Yes.
Automated Feed: No.
Costs: None, generally.
Concerns: Untested longevity for the smaller repositories.
Institutional Repositories
Finally, we’d be remiss not to mention that your IU affiliation comes with access to a permanent repository. IUScholarworks doesn’t offer a CV-like landing page for authors, but deposits receive…
- A unique permanent URL for the archived copy (and metadata that can connect it to the version of record’s DOI or PubMed number for various OA tools).
- A promise of perpetual access even if you leave the university.
- The ability to automatically manage Green Open Access requirements like embargo periods.
All of this is provided for free by IU Libraries. When combined with a service like ORCID for creating a scholarly profile, IUScholarWorks adds that important element of a permanent, author-driven archive. You can read more about the benefits of IU ScholarWorks on our LibGuide.
Document Upload: Yes.
Automated Feed: No.
Costs: None.
Concerns: No CV services.
Summary
In a previous blog post I wrote about the LOCKSS philosophy (lots of copies keeps stuff safe), and the true can be said for maintaining a presence on social media, including these academic profile services. The field is still waiting for the “killer app” of a non-profit with automated feeds that integrates persistent IDs and a permanent repository, but the ideal solution may always be to link together more specialized services. Academic writing involves a number of parties (scholars, funding agencies, publishers, universities), and number of audiences (fellow scholars, the public, the job market, tenure-review boards). Only you can decide which services are best for your needs, which are worth updating occasionally, and which are a knowingly temporary solution.
Open Access Week (October 20 – 24) is an annual opportunity to learn and raise awareness about Open Access: free, immediate, online access to scholarly research and the right to use and re-use that research as needed. Click here to see the list of events at IU.
About the author: Elizabeth-Marie Helms is a graduate student in Library Science and the History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine. A former middle school history teacher, she now studies the public understanding of science and works as an assistant in Scholarly Communications for IU Libraries.
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