Academia.edu VS Goldsmiths Research Online

Godzilla vs. Gamera
by ItekiThwei Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

 

Reasons to use Academia.edu:

1. it’s popular! 29 million users (4,769 identify as Goldsmiths), 8 million papers
2. Easy to create a profile
3. Build online global networks around your area of research
4. Follow other researchers and research interests
5. It looks nice

Reasons not to use Academia.edu:

1. As a venture capitalist funded operation (8 million dollars raised ) it relies on the selling of your personal data and that is it’s goal (it want’s your address book!)
2. It’s not Open Access (you must have an account to read or download)
3. Once you have added all the information about your papers you can’t get it back out (no export/import functions)
4. No commitment to long term preservation (will they be around in 10 years? What happens to your work if it closes?)
5. It’s license claim ““By making any Member Content available through the Site or Services, you hereby grant to Academia.edu a worldwide, non-exclusive, transferable, sublicenseable, perpetual, royalty-free license to reproduce, modify for formatting purposes, prepare derivative works based upon, publicly display, publicly perform, distribute, and otherwise use your Member Content in connection with operating and providing the Services and Content to you and to other Members.”
6. It does not meet Open Access policies for HEFCE (very important if you intend for your research to be submitted to the next Research Evaluation Framework REF in 2021)
7. It’s creepy (5 unknown people looked at me)
8. Lots of bad spelling (Anthroplogy?!!)

Reasons to use Goldsmiths Research Online (Open Access Repository)

1. It’s prime goal is to support the dissemination and sharing of research
2. It’s non profit
3. It’s definitely Open Access
4. It allows you to import and export your data, you own it (very useful if you go to another institution)
5. It has a commitment to long term preservation
6. It meet’s the Open Access policies for HEFCE, Research Councils UK, European Council and many other funders
7. It has a team ensuring good metadata
8. It mainly has good spelling

Reasons not to use Goldsmiths Research Online

1. It doesn’t look that nice (but we are working on it!)

For a more detailed breakdown of the differences between Academic Social Networks e.g. Academia.edu and Open Access Repositories e.g. Goldsmiths Research Online read

http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/12/a-social-networking-site-is-not-an-open-access-repository/