Dive Brief:
- Academia.edu has more than 25 million registered users, all of whom have the option to post published papers and, now, solicit feedback on works in progress.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education reports the site is meant to be a social network that gives faculty the chance to interact online as they do at conferences, offering comments and critiques of unfinished work.
- While peer-reviewing papers is often an arduous task, the site's creators expect to keep the interest of scholars by making it easier for them to stay on top of the most cutting-edge research.
Dive Insight:
Academia.edu’s latest tool allows researchers to near constantly have access to peer critiques. For years faculty have had to wait to present their work at conferences. Of course, many have colleagues with whom they share their work before submitting it to journals, but the social network offers an opportunity to get the work to a potentially broader circle. With many faculty arriving on the site to post published articles in hopes of additional citations, they now may stay a little longer to see work that is on the horizon.