Academics are beginning to descend from their ivory towers to make their research more accessible to the public. With the advent of academic social networks, this will be a lot easier. According to an article on GigaOM, “Apart from connecting people, ResearchGate also lets researchers treat their profiles as personal webpages for the purposes of republishing papers they have written.”
As a generation of college graduates who grew up using social media enters post-graduate programs, the use of academic social networks will grow. Besides promoting collaboration, these sites make it easier for academics to disseminate their publications and share their research. The days of tramping through the aisles of some musty university library looking for an obscure dissertation are ending.
By providing Free Student Licenses and Free Academic Licenses, Sogolytics hopes to give students and teachers another valuable research tool. Besides an intuitive interface, Sogolytics’s online survey software features a powerful report module, fosters collaboration and makes it easy to publish and share results.
While most academics aren’t abandoning the ivory tower, it’s only a matter of time. Young researchers will increasingly use social media to share their research with each other and the public alike. Although there’s no academic equivalent to Facebook yet, I can’t wait to see a status that reads, “Totally just invented a quantum computer!”
“Like.”
