There are plenty of studies showing that having a followable online presence increases your citation rate. This is why some people think that having an online social media presence is helpful for hiring and promotion. What about academic social networks? And what about personal websites? Do you need one? There are a few reasons to think that you do (e.g., greater control and maintenance of your online presence than university profile pages provide). In the first 15 minutes of this talk I will quickly lay out the research that bears on your having an academic social network profile and having a website. In the latter 15 minutes of the talk (not included here, yet), I will create a website for someone in the room. So when you leave, you should not only be able to make a decision about making an academic social profile and with making a website, you should also be familiar with the process of making a website. Your Online Presence: Academic Social Networks and Personal Websites Why? How?. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316322587_Your_Online_Presence_Academic_Social_Networks_and_Personal_Websites_Why_How

1. Your Online Presence
Academic Social Networks and Personal Websites
Why? How?
Nick Byrd
byrdnick.com

2. Receiving
Citation
Quality of Your
Publication
Popularity of
Your Topic
Visibility of Your
Publication
Accessibility of
Your Publication
Automaticity of
alerts about your
publication
(from Kyung Kim and Devin Soper's “Be Visible or Vanish”)
Is your research
visible?
Accessible?
Is your research
followable?

3. How Accessibility Works
Accessibility: self-archive preprints and other
publications on your website or an academic social
network (ASN) — e.g., ResearchGate, Academia.edu.
NB: “ResearchGate [has the highest rate of full text availability]” (Jamali and Nabavi 2015)
Google Scholar crawls the internet for your papers
and then directs search traffic to you and your papers.

4. People follow researchers (or topics or phrases)
using Google Scholar, ResearchGate,
Academia.edu, PhilPapers, etc.
When those researchers upload a preprint or
publish something, their followers are
automatically alerted.
How Following Works

5. ASNs → Citations
“…articles posted to Academia.edu
had 58% more citations than articles
only posted to other online venues,
such as personal and departmental
home pages, after five years.”
(Niyazov et al 2016, italics added)
NB: some of these ↑ authors have a conflict of interest.

6. Comparing ASNs
FREE
Automatic
Citation
metrics
Manual
Citation
Metrics
Upload/link
to Preprints
Access
without
account?
Built-in
comment
system
Website-
like Page
Registered
Users
✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ A bunch?
✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 210,641
✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 11 million
✓ ✓ ✓ $
50
million

7. ASN user base
The number of registered users on a
site might be misleading. After all,
many registered users might not be
active users.
So you might not care that
Academia.edu has more registered
users than ResearchGate because the
latter seems to have far more active
(academic) users — i.e., more users
who can cite your work.
(From Nature, 2014)

8. How Do Scholars Use ASNs?
From “Academic social networks…”

9. …visualized
From “Academic social networks…”

10. …visualized
From “Academic social networks…”

11. From Times Higher Ed.
Why?
Perhaps because scholars in
the Arts & Humanities are
much less likely to use
ResearchGate than
Academia.edu?
(Academia.edu was started by someone
in the Arts & Humanities)

12. (From Nature, 2014)
Google Scholar
is the most
used ASN.
So, if nothing
else, make a
Google Scholar
profile.

13. Social Media?
1. “[Over 40% of scientists who use social
media regularly report that they use social
media to discover peers]” (Nature, 2014,
italics added)
2. “The volume of Twitter mentions is
statistically correlated with arXiv downloads
and early citations just months after the
publication of a preprint” (Shuai et al, 2012)
3. “Highly tweeted articles were 11 times
more likely to be highly cited than less-
tweeted articles” (Eysenbach,2011 )

14. Your own website?
1. More control over your online presence.
2. Continuity of online presence between jobs/
institutions.
3. Descriptions of your teaching (and perhaps videos
of it).
4. Blog posts
to alert followers when you publish/present
something (e.g., Myisha Cherry, Richard Zach)
for plain-language descriptions of your research
(e.g., Eric Schwitzgebel).
to work out your ideas (e.g. Helen de Cruz, Rachel
Williams, John Danaher, Richard Yetter Chappell).
or just to stay in the habit of writing regularly.

15. All-in-one website
and ASN?
Academia.edu now offers a “Personal
Website” service for about $8/month.

16. ASNs vs. ASNs vs. WEBSITES
FREE
FOLLOW-
ABLE
AUTO
SETUP
CUSTOM
DOMAIN ($)
LARGE
THEME
LIBRARY
FRONT
END
EDITING
DRAG &
DROP
EDITING
CUSTOMIZE
EVERYTHING
MOBILE-
FRIENDLY
AD
FREE
BLOG
READY
Google Sites ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Wordpress ✓ ✓ $ ✓ ish ish $ ✓ $ ✓
WIX ✓ ✓ ✓ $ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Weebly ✓ ✓ $ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Squarespace $ $ $ ish $ $
Google Scholar ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Academia.edu ✓ ✓ $ $ ish
ResearchGate ✓ ✓ ish

17. Take Action
1. Create a Google Scholar profile (3-step tutorial)
2. Decide whether or not to create a profile on an ASN
(Academia.edu, ResearchGate, Mendeley, others)
3. Decide whether or not to get yourself a website
(New Google Sites, Wordpress, WIX, Weebly,
Squarespace, etc.)
4. Next step: use citation management and
bookmarking tools (Google Scholar Button,
Mendeley (also an ASN), Zotero)

18. Other Resources
Arvan, C. (2015). Query: why so few early-career bloggers?
Ebrahim, A., Nader, Salehi, H., Embi, M. A., Habibi, F., Gholizadeh, H., …
Ordi, A. (2013). Effective Strategies for Increasing Citation Frequency
(SSRN). Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.
Griffiths, M. D. (2015). How to improve your citation count.
MacCallum, C. J., & Parthasarathy, H. (2006). Open Access Increases
Citation Rate. PLOS Biology, 4(5), e176. https://doi.org/10.1371/
journal.pbio.0040176
Reynolds, C., & Mulcahy, L. (2015). PhD Career Development
Programme. London School of Economics.
Swan, A. (2010, February). The Open Access citation advantage: Studies
and results to date.
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