Scholar Profiles

Despite the exhaustion of creating and maintaining scholar profiles (see article about this fatigue here), one of the main arguments for why we need profiles like these, are because as people learn about our work, they're going to Google us and search for us. So here are some tips about making, maintaining, and weighing all these things...

 PURPOSE
The main purpose of a scholarly profile is to help point people to your work (i.e., your research articles). All of the websites in the gray box do that and some will even link to your article (or you can choose to upload them so that people can download). This is often helpful for readership and circulation, especially if for example, a journal is no longer in circulation. One of my articles (about the "Perceptions of progress") was published in Thought and Action which is no longer in print (you can find it on my research page). 

METRICS
Part of why these types of websites are helpful is because of how they can additionally offer insight to readership and metrics. While journals and academic sites generate statistics on readership, those might not paint the whole picture The Becker Model is a great read about how to phrase your impact, especially if not captured by traditional models and metrics of citation counts.

PLATFORMS
(alphabetical order)

​Academia.edu

BePress

GoogleScholar

ORCHID-ID

​Publon

ResearchGate

TIME, LABOR, AND (RE)PRODUCTION
Somewhat relatedly, these types of scholarly profiles can expand beyond these platforms where you might create a website. In doing so, it might be a place to share articles, resources, etc. You can learn more about my process here, how I created my own site here, resources about the research section here, and some considerations for designing. ​Across all of these sites, websites or otherwise, they vary in time management. Some, like Google Scholar are automated while for others like Academia.edu or ResearchGate, you have to continually update them. Likewise, websites require their own time and maintenance. 

Yet in doing all of these things, one aspect I think is important to consider is why. I write about it more here in an article with the Journal Committed to Social Change on Race and Ethnicity,  but something critically important to consider is how we might be reproducing neoliberalism and productivity, OR alternatively, how we could use websites to create counterspaces and share resources. Why are we doing the work and sharing the work in the ways that we do? And for whom? (As you might know from the "Opportunities & Due Dates" section of this website, I am committed to challenging scarcity modeling and the competitiveness that arises within academia and that's part of my motivation in maintaining this site). 

EVOLUTION & OTHER NOTES
With technology, trends, and timing, chances are the by the time you read this post (whenever it is), there are probably several new apps or sites to add, so please comment others are you've found or noticed. And if you're curious about what I utilizize, I obviously have a website (haha), and use ORCHID-ID and Google Scholar (both of which require you to create a profile). I also have an Academia.edu, BePress, and ResearchGate site but admittedly, am a little lax about keeping them updated.