Why?

Why would a researcher (faculty, graduate student-- anyone who has published papers) want to use one or more of these profile services?  Any or all of these reasons:

Among the scholarly profile services/scholarly networking services are:

Google Scholar Profile

You probably already use Google Scholar (scholar.google.com). You'll notice that sometimes, when you look up an author's name, you'll find a special entry at the top, like this:

You'll also see the same author's name underlined (hyperlinked) in entries in Google Scholar, like so:

Clicking on that link displays the author's contact information and a list of their publications as displayed in Google Scholar. This is their Google Scholar Profile.

Having a Google Scholar profile allows others interested in your work to easily identify your other publications; it also allows them to easily find your contact information, or even be notified when you publish something new. It also allows you to view and track the number of times your work is cited, and who has cited your work, and where. Last but not least, it allows you to differentiate yourself from other authors with similar names.

The Google Scholar Profile is the easiest for Drew Faculty to create, as we already have a linked Google Account. (In order to create a profile, you should have at least one publication that comes up under your name in Google Scholar.)

ResearcherID & ORCid

Scholarly Social Networks/Publication Clearinghouses

ResearchGate.net

Academia.edu

Notes and Cautions

Bear in mind that all these services are created by for-profit organizations. That doesn't give them the rights to your copyrighted work, but it does allow them to use citations and metrics for their business model.

Before making full text available online, check your publication agreements to see that you have followed their guidelines. (Librarians can help with this!)

While materials that are online are easy to copy, they are also often easy to detect-- do a Google/Google Scholar search on relatively unique phrases from your work.