CHOOSING AND 
USING ACADEMIC 
SHARING AND 
NETWORKING 
PLATFORMS 

01 Social networking in academia 
Professional networking and sharing tools are in 
widespread use in academia. What can these 
tools do for you, and how should you choose 
among them? 
Academic sharing and networking platforms 
may enable you to discover publications of 
interest to you and share your publications 
freely, present a public view (profile) of your 
scholarship, demonstrate impact by showing 
downloads, citation counts or other metrics, 
network – find experts or collaborators, and 
preserve your work for the long term. 
Some of these services are offered by 
commercial entities; others are offered by 
libraries and independent non-profit 
organizations. Consider the mission and 
motivation of the service provider and read 
their terms of service and privacy policies. If 
you don’t trust the major social networks, you 
might not trust the academic equivalents 
either. 
And before you post your publications to any 
service, make sure that you’re legally 
entitled to do so. If you didn’t save your 
publication agreement, look up the sharing 
policies of the journal in which you published 
using SHERPA/RoMEO: sherpa.ac.uk/romeo 
Cover credit:  Nathan Dumlao via unsplash 
02 Non-commercial platforms 
eCommons, a service of Cornell University 
Library, provides long-term access to a broad 
range of Cornell-related digital content of 
enduring value. Use it to share your scholarly 
work with the world, and to access the work of 
others at Cornell. 
ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier 
that distinguishes you from other researchers. 
It is used in key research workflows such as 
manuscript and grant submission. It supports 
automated links between you and your 
professional activities, ensuring that you get 
credit for your work. ORCID can also be used to 
create a public profile. 
Some e- or pre-print servers, such as arXiv, 
are non-commercial entities that support the 
sharing of scholarly work. 
Credit: Lars Ploughmann via Flickr 
03 Commercial platforms 
Academia.edu* and ResearchGate are 
commercial platforms that primarily facilitate 
content sharing and networking. Mendeley 
does the same, while also being a citation 
management tool. Google Scholar is primarily 
a search engine for scholarly content, and can 
be used to create an author profile with impact 
metrics. 
*Academia.edu registered its domain name prior to the 
requirement that .edu domain names be held only by post-
secondary education institutions. 
Credit: I’m Roomian via unsplash 
04 Platforms compared 
DISCOVER SHARE PROFILE IMPACT NETWORK PRESERVE 
NON-COMMERCIAL PLATFORMS 
eCommons ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 
ORCID ✔ 
COMMERCIAL PLATFORMS 
Academia.edu ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 
Google Scholar ✔ ✔ ✔ 
Mendeley ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 
ResearchGate ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ 
Icons by Becris, Ralf Schmitzer, Alain W., Adrien Coquet, Fauzan Admiima, and Aneeque Ahmed for the Noun Project. 
05 Resources 
eCommons 
• eCommons: ecommons.cornell.edu 
• eCommons help: 
guides.library.cornell.edu/ecommons 
ORCID 
• CUL’s ORCID guide: 
guides.library.cornell.edu/orcid 
• ORCID website: orcid.org 
Author rights and copyright 
• Author rights guide: 
guides.library.cornell.edu/authorrights 
• Cornell Copyright Information Center: 
copyright.cornell.edu 
• Open access publishing guide: 
guides.library.cornell.edu/openaccess 
• SHERPA/RoMEO: sherpa.ac.uk/romeo 
Articles 
• Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2015. Academia, Not Edu. 
• University of California Office of Scholarly 
Communication. 2015. A social networking site 
is not an open access repository. 
"Choosing and using academic sharing and networking platforms" 
by Cornell University Library is licensed under CC BY 4.0