Scholarly Identity: A Guide

Everyone has an online presence. It is important to make sure this representation of your academic self is accurate and up-to-date. Through the use of an ORCID, website/blog, and scholarly profiles, you can manage and curate your identity to recruit potential students, connect with collaborators, and inform the public and academia about your research. 

Remember, if you don’t manage your online presence, you are allowing search engines to create it for you.

• Which networking and social media sites are favored by your peers?
• Are you looking to share/post research papers and projects?
• Are you looking to share citations and links to your work but not the full document?
• Are you comfortable with how they regulate, collect, and (possibly) share your data? Read the terms of service.
• Do you want anyone to access your profile or only users registered on that networking site?
• Do you want to have active discussions or ask questions to your peers?
• Are you hoping to track impact metrics -reads, shares, downloads, interaction?
• Are you actively trying to recruit students or professionals to your research team?
• Do you enjoy writing, especially for the general public?