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Creating & Managing an Academic Profile

This guide focuses on skills and tools for discussing, interacting, presenting, writing, commenting, and finally publishing your research in the social networks used by academics.

As an academic, your work involves creating, gathering, and collating research and educational material.  Sharing this work is not only a way to connect with your academic community but also a way to build your online profile.  

Twitter Hashtags & Lists

Twitter is a popular microblogging service that can be use in academia to:

  • Follow colleagues or research projects;
  • Post links to research papers;
  • Solicit advice on works-in-progress, ideas, or problems;
  • Create and follow custom newspapers out of Twitter content using paper.li

Hashtags used on Twitter, and other social networks sites, allow you to use a word or phrase preceded by a hash or pound sign (#)  to identify messages on a specific topic.  To learn the different parts of a "tweet", review the Anatomy of a Tweet image.

Twitter Lists are a way to curate groups of users into thematic lists.  You can create your own lists or subscribe to lists created by others. Viewing a list timeline will show you a stream of Tweets from only the users on that list.

How to Use Hashtags & Lists

Examples of Academic Hashtag Use

cIRcle

cIRcle is UBC's open access digital repository for published and unpublished material created by the UBC community and its partners, including faculty, students, and staff.

Depositing in cIRcle allows your materials to be indexed and easily findable by high-profile search engines such as Google as well as academically focused search engines and collections such as Google Scholar and OAIster. Theses and dissertations are additionally harvested by Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD), and Library and Archives Canada Theses Portal.

cIRcle enhances the global reach of and accessibility to UBC research and enables UBC researchers to comply with the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications.

For information on depositing with cIRcle, visit cIRcle's submission page.

Open Bibliographies

Open bibliographies is the act of sharing citations on a specific theme or topic on the internet.  This curated list of materials can be a useful starting point for other researchers while also directing people to your knowledge in the area of study.  Open bibliographies can be created using citation management tools, or through blogs, wikis or personal websites.

Open Bibliography Tools

Examples of Open Bibliographies

Open Education

Open Educational Resources (OER) are freely accessible, openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes. They can include, but are not limited to, syllabi, reading lists, handouts and course readings, PowerPoint slides, and even videos. 

As an instructor, you can leverage all the time you spend teaching by publishing your teaching materials online on a website, wiki, or in a repository for others to use in their own instruction. 

Examples of Open Education Resources at UBC

Open Education Repositories are online storage systems that allow educators to share, manage, and use educational resources that are made freely accessible and openly licensed. 

Open Education Repositories

Examples of Content in Open Education Repositories

Open Data

Research data is the data created or generated as part of a research project and exists in many formats including numeric data, text, transcripts, images, video and audio recordings. Sharing your data is a way to increase both the impact of your work and extend your research beyond an initial study.

Examples of Open Data

  • Ward, W. Peter; Jahanfar, Shayesteh; Lesack, Paul, 2014-07, "Bologna Sant'Orsola Maternity Clinic Database, 1880-1940", hdl:11272/10050  (in UBC Library's Abacus Dataverse Network)
  • Kahn AS, Leys SP (2016) Data from: The role of cell replacement in benthic–pelagic coupling by suspension feeders. Dryad Digital Repository. http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1787f, which accompanies this article: Moyers BT, Rieseberg LH (2016) Remarkable life history polymorphism may be evolving under divergent selection in the silverleaf sunflower. Molecular Ecology 25(16): 3817–3830. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mec.13723

Open Data Repositories

Lists of Repositories

Open Data Sharing

More information about Open Data is available from your subject librarian and from

orcid.org/0000-0002-8456-5660

Presentation Sharing

Have you given a presentation at a conference or colloquium that you're exceptionally proud of? Chances are that you also spent a good amount of time making professional slides. Archiving your slides online can give people early glimpses into your research. It can also help maintain your active research presence after the presentation and build interest in your future publications. Get the most out of your slides!

Examples of Academic Slide Sharing

Presentation Sharing Tools