Feature in ACI Author Spotlight

Image from freepik.com
Image from freepik.com

Thank you to ACI Information Group’s Traci Hector for featuring me in their Author Spotlight this month. Also, my profile on ACI is available here.

As I continue to move forward in my career, I need to think about the ways in which sites like ACI, ORCID, and others work, I am curious to know more about the advantages and disadvantages of such systems. These systems appear to create a public profile for a scholar that then allow users to then follow links into official databases.

On the other hand, there are sites like Academi.edu and ResearchGate, which have received some criticisms such as this from the Chronicle’s Vitae blog and this one from The Scholarly Kitchen. The main point is that they ask scholars to upload PDFs of their work (sometimes without appropriate copyright permissions) and then they connect those articles with other analytics for ads.

Then, there are my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Klout and (seemingly) countless other profiles.

So, each year around this time when I have to update my CV and enter my own work into CMU’s faculty records database (we use a site called OFIS), I wonder if there isn’t a better (more efficient, more connected, more useful, more public, more open…) way to do this work. It leaves me with lots of questions:

  • What does it mean to be a public intellectual today?
  • “Where” is “public?” Also, “how,” “when,” and “what” is public? To whom?
  • Should I just focus my energy on one of these systems/sites? Or, do I need to keep doing more with each?
  • What does this all mean for open education?

At any rate, I have a profile in ACI, and a featured article. As always, please check it out and let me know what you think.


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