Question for the forum: academia.edu pros/cons/usertips

[doobiebrothers]

Dear Grad Cafe,

 

I'm preparing for the next round of PhD applications, and one of the reasons that I think this round was not as successful as I might have hoped was because of a less-than-professional online presence. Nothing bad--not bad pictures, or anything like that, but also nothing super polished.

 

For instance, my academia.edu profile: I have one, I have maybe 3 articles and five presentations on it, and it gets alot of views--three weeks ago one of my papers was the #4 most viewed paper at Harvard! But this also works against me: I know that my profile was seen by the committee multiple times (because it shows you who looks, what search terms they use, and when they looked) and I want it to be perfect this time around.

 

Does anybody use academia.edu and have any tips for what makes a good profile? What kind of pic should be up there? Papers? Should I comment? I'm just not sure how to make it an effective 'calling card' for my future academic work. I'd really appreciate any help and advice!

 

Thanks,

 

Doobie

[tspier2]

Dear Grad Cafe,

 

I'm preparing for the next round of PhD applications, and one of the reasons that I think this round was not as successful as I might have hoped was because of a less-than-professional online presence. Nothing bad--not bad pictures, or anything like that, but also nothing super polished.

 

For instance, my academia.edu profile: I have one, I have maybe 3 articles and five presentations on it, and it gets alot of views--three weeks ago one of my papers was the #4 most viewed paper at Harvard! But this also works against me: I know that my profile was seen by the committee multiple times (because it shows you who looks, what search terms they use, and when they looked) and I want it to be perfect this time around.

 

Does anybody use academia.edu and have any tips for what makes a good profile? What kind of pic should be up there? Papers? Should I comment? I'm just not sure how to make it an effective 'calling card' for my future academic work. I'd really appreciate any help and advice!

 

Thanks,

 

Doobie

 

I was accepted into a Ph.D. program for fall, and I have barely anything on my Academia page. I do know, however, that the search committees looked at my LinkedIn account. Do you also have a profile on there?

[m-ttl]

I was accepted into a Ph.D. program for fall, and I have barely anything on my Academia page. I do know, however, that the search committees looked at my LinkedIn account. Do you also have a profile on there?

 

I have basically nothing up and got accepted to a PhD -- but I have a pretty thorough LinkedIn. I just feel weird about loading up my academic papers. Like things may not necessarily reflect what I write now? And certainly what was acceptable to turn in for classwork isn't necessarily ready for publishing, so I'd want to refine and edit more 

 

People keep looking at my profile, however. I'm just not sure if I should put things up just to have something, or if they'll "taint" my highest quality work. Should everything be super polished and ready to publish, or are class papers fine? I'd also love to hear from more experienced folks!

Edited June 15, 2014 by m-ttl

[klondike]

I would also like to know more about this, I'm not sure how to navigate it. (Preface: humanities-oriented response) I only made a profile after acceptances, but I put up my papers, articles and reviews that have been published (all except one, that was in a student journal in my first year, and I don't put my published fiction etc there). I have only had a few views and none of the documents have been viewed, but I also don't tag them with anything... I've heard that others that are available online in some form have been downloaded a lot.

 

But almost none of the people I follow have posted anything, I think only 5 out of 30. One is a mid-level phd student in art history, and the others are professors and 1 phd student in social science fields. Many people seem to post just titles, at least for some papers including presentations, without attaching the text, so I guess some use it as an online cv (but then they also upload a CV so I don't get it...) It's strange, I have so rarely seen significant people in my field post anything it makes me wonder if I should take my papers down...Or are there privacy features I don't know about that allow you to hide papers from people you don't follow or something else that would explain it? I'm happy with my work and would like it to be widely available, but maybe only having 5-6 things there looks bad? 

 

And do people actually send messages on there? It seems like everyone just "follows" people and does nothing else!

 

I don't think I would put anything there that hasn't already been published, it just doesn't seem like what the site is for. I definitely wouldn't put up any writing that I don't feel is publication-ready, but if you would like to share your writing there's no reason why you can't revise your better class papers to something you think is close to publication-quality (and then take it down if/when you feel your writing has advanced)

 

My instinct is to model your page after those of senior grad students/young professors in your field. (hence my own question on whether I should take things down just to conform to how others use the site)

[mdiv2014]

i have no advice to give but am curious about this thread......i know of experts of everything on-line who do business consulting and i know 'brand image' consultants but i have yet to hear of an expert/guru/consultant who handles personal on-line image consulting for individuals (with knowledge of academics) - and would be their client if one existed!

have you tried googling pr and image consultants just to see what they offer 

repolishing one's on-line presence is good for the long run - i would advice having a consistent message throughout without looking packaged - and showing passion, wholesomeness and ..... pluck (but the last one is me)

my instincts say your on-line presence wasnt the kill shot of your application and neither will a well polished on-line presence put you over the top but it would support your application or not

good luck dobbie

[Eigen]

At least in my field, I highly doubt anyone cares what you have on your linkedIn, ResearchGate or Academia.edu pages, as long as it's not wildly unprofessional or controversial. 

 

I can't see that the lack of a fantastic page would get you knocked out of consideration, or that the presence of a fantastic one would get you in. 

 

You do have to market yourself, but you can do that just as well in your application materials and not need an external (web) source. 

[fuzzylogician]

I doubt whether having an academia.edu page is a big factor in PhD acceptances/rejections. However, having a less-than-professional online presence could be an issue because these days adcoms are likely to google prospective students and you want respectable and representative pages to come up in that search. At some point in your academic career it does become important to have an online presence, but at least in my field that doesn't have to be an academia.edu page or a linkedin profile, it's sufficient to just have everything on your own website, hosted on your university's server or else on a domain you've bought that hopefully has a somewhat respectable name. If you don't have a lot to show at the moment, a clean one page website with a link to your CV and a description of your research interests is sufficient.