Are your professors on Facebook? Very few of mine have a Facebook account. If they do, they seldom use it. But there are benefits to social networking sites. They are not all about wasting time, pictures of parties, and relationship statuses. Social networking sites can actually be used to network. Will researchers begin to use social networking sites? Well, I hope they do. And there are two websites that are helping to connect researchers.

The two websites are Graduate Junction and academia.edu. Both sites are still underdeveloped (compared to facebook), but they appear to be very promising. These sites will help bring the world of academia to the 21st century. Which is a well needed endeavor.

What will you find on these sites?

The Norm - You find your basics for a social networking site: bio, occupation, school, department, your websites, etc.

Academic Information - The sites have sections where you can update papers and books you have published. And Academia.edu also allows you to put talks that you have done or are going to do.

What I believe is the most important thing the sites allow is for you to search by interests. That way you can easily search for other scholars that are working on similar research topics. Working with others can always reduce the amount of time you work on the research, increase the quality of the research, and can make the work a lot more enjoyable.

Currently, both sites are for graduate students and professors. Well, I am an undergraduate. What did I do? I went ahead and signed up as a graduate. I asked the developers at academia.edu if they intended on adding a group for undergraduates, and they said they were working on adding undergraduates. But in the mean time if you are an undergraduate go ahead and sign up as a graduate.

Which Site is Better?

As I said, both sites are still at the beginning stage and have a lot of potential. At first glance academia.edu is a very confusing site. It was the most difficult sign up I have ever done. GraduateJunction on the other hand is a very simple site to use. When it comes to simplicity it gets a 10 out of 10.

As of right now, I see myself using GraduateJunction over Academia.edu.

The sites are there, but unfortunately just having a structure of a site won’t make it a social networking tool. People must use the site. Maybe I will find you on one of these websites.