Professional social networks – for researchers

Milan Zdravković

Facebooks in suits

viadeo.com (France) xing.com (Germany)

LinkedIn – the best fit

LinkedIn – the best fit

◦ Launched on May, 2003◦ More than 200 M users (11 M

from Europe, 100 M from USA)◦ No. 2 social network in USA◦ Revenues are coming from

talent solutions, marketing solutions and premium subscriptions

◦ LinkedIn was the 14th most visited website in the world in Nov 2012 (Alexa traffic rank)

◦ Will it open the arena of products for Social Enterprises?

Features

Features

◦ Create and maintain list of professional contacts◦ Get introduced to 2nd and 3rd level of contacts◦ Design and advertise the professional profile

– Find jobs, people and business opportunities by search or by “following” companies

◦ Advertise companies– Create company pages, list products and services– List jobs and search for potential candidates

◦ Ask questions for the community (LinkedIn Answers)◦ Groups

– Forum discussion, polls◦ Embedded applications

– Amazon reading list, TripIt, WordPress, SlideShare

Gated-access approach

Gated-access approach

◦ contact with any professional requires either an existing relationship, or the intervention of a contact of theirs

Social job search

“Social” job search

◦ Consult your contacts about the jobs

◦ Get introduced to decision makers in your network

Social job search

“Social” job search

◦ Find companies who are hiring and have employees from your network

ResearchGate

ResearchGate

◦ If LinkedIn is Facebook for professionals, than ResearchGate is LinkedIn for researchers

◦ Over 2.6 M users

◦ approx. 35 M papers

Features

Features

◦ Self-archiving

– Publishing papers, datasets

◦ Find potential collaborators

◦ Collaboration

– Ask questions, participate in discussions on specific topics

– Setup projects, exchange data files, manage tasks

◦ Build reputation through a reputation score and IF

– Personal

– Institutional

◦ Post jobs, search job listings

Researcher on ResearchGate

Researcher on ResearchGate

Goin viral with your papers

Goin’ viral with your papers on ResearchGate

Typical problems

Typical problems

◦ The redundancy

– Publications cannot be removed or even sometimes – cannot be edited (when imported)

◦ Background noise

– High-number of non-informed, sometimes even absurd questions

◦ Lack of original service

– All features are already offered by other websites

Enjoy your coffee !