eCommons and SelectedWorks: Better than ResearchGate?

Is eCommons better than scholarly social media?

The short answer is ... yes. But who at a university likes a short answer? Here's the long one:

Institutional repositories such as eCommons provide a stable, reliable, high-quality and highly discoverable medium for scholarly communication.

True, social media sites boast scads and scads of subscribers. ResearchGate claims 20 million; Academia.edu says it has 171 million. These sites have lots of content, but they also include spammers, scammers, predatory publishers, bogus and unreviewed research, student scholarship not identified as such ... and copyright violations — so many copyright violations. And, depending on the terms of service, these sites and the people on them may be able to use your work in ways you don't intend.

In a recent online discussion of scholarly communications librarians, one theme prevailed: Social media can be a powerful tool in promoting your scholarship when used in combination with your institutional repository. Their recommendation: Rather than provide a full-text download on social media, provide a link to your archived work in the institutional repository. That way, all of your downloads and metrics will come from the same place, and you can protect your own copyright. 

Other benefits of using eCommons:

1. We do copyright clearance, so you don't have to lose sleep at night wondering whether you've violated your publisher's copyright agreement.
2. No spam, scams, ads or predators: In both eCommons and SelectedWorks, your address is cloaked, so it can't be scraped by automated data harvesters and other nefarious entities.
3. The URL your paper receives in eCommons is stable and persistent: Wherever you post it, the link works — and it leads to a system that tracks readership.
4. Detailed reports: You'll see how many downloads each paper receives, along with referrers and searches that led to your work.
5. Bonus: You get to know the friendly people in University Libraries.

If you have questions or would like to have your scholarship added to the repository, get in touch with your University Libraries liaison or with eCommons staff. We look forward to working with you.