| Profile Platforms |
Cost |
Purpose |
Caveats |
| Google Scholar |
Free |
The Google Scholar profile is public and allows you to track the number of citations to your articles and calculate your citation metrics. |
Anyone can see the number of times your work has been cited as well as the scores assigned to it |
| ORCID |
Free (for individual researchers) |
ORCID is an cross-disciplinary service that creates and maintains a registry of unique researcher identifiers and then links research output to these identifiers. |
Different membership/subscription fees for organizations |
| UCSD Profiles |
Free |
Profiles Research Networking Software is available as an open source platform for institutions seeking a web-based means of facilitating collaboration among their academic researchers. |
This instance is for UCSD faculty only. Software can be used for other institutions. |
| Scripps Research Profiles |
Free |
Web sites for Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego faculty and graduate students, including biographies, publications and research interests. |
Scripps Research Profiles is administered by Scripps Institution of Oceanography and powered by OpenScholar software. |
| Humanities Commons |
Free |
The scholarly network for for people working in the humanities developed by the Modern Language Association (MLA). |
Discover the latest open-access scholarship and teaching materials, make interdisciplinary connections, build a WordPress Web site, and increase the impact of your work by sharing it in the repository. |
| KNIT |
Free (UCSD only) |
A digital commons for UC San Diego, get started building websites, joining groups, and networking. |
It's a work in process. |
| ResearchGate |
Free (basic) |
ResearchGate is a social networking tool for scientists and researchers that provides the opportunity to connect and collaborate, make your research visible, and obtain stats and metrics. |
Very interactive, oriented towards collaboration and discovery |
| Academia.edu |
Free (basic) |
The purpose of academia.edu is to allow academics to share their research, monitor the impact of their research, and track the research of other academics they follow. |
Has one of the largest membership bases |
| Wordpress.com |
Free (basic) |
Wordpress.com is a free blog web hosting service that allows your to track your popularity and that can be connected to other social networking websites. |
Will transfer blog from previous platform over for you, steeper learning curve than other blogging sites and upgrades available for a fee |
| LinkedIn |
Free (basic) |
LinkedIn is a social networking tool for professionals that is especially useful for promoting your image and finding out about potential employers/employees. |
Premium accounts available for a fee, the cheapest starting at $19.95/month |
| About.me |
Free (basic) |
About.me allows you to create a public profile and personal webpage while also keeping all of your personal online identity links in one place. Simple to use and visually attractive. |
Completely free and is simple to use but is only a landing page that directs to other social networking profiles. Tends to generate a lot of spam. |
| Blogger |
Free |
Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows you to share your thoughts with the world and can also double as a personal webpage. |
A Google service that integrates Analytics access, custom domain name available for a fee |
