Open Access and social media

Social media is a good channel for making your research visible. Some publishers, however, see social networks such as Research Gate and Academia.edu as detrimental or disruptive to the publishing environment, and have restrictions on their articles being posted on such sites. 

There is a great deal of variation as to what publishers allow with regard to posting articles on social network platforms such as Research Gate, Academia.edu, Mendeley, etc., and it is not necessarily the same rules that apply, as for self-archiving/parallel publishing in Pure. However, you can always link to an article archived in Pure from other platforms.

Therefore, you should always check:

• if you are allowed to post your article
• which version of the article you may post
• under what conditions you may submit
• if there is an embargo period

For a number of publishers/journals, you can see where it is permitted to upload the different versions of your article via:

• Sherpa Romeo – by searching for the journal name or ISSN
• How can I share it? - by searching for your article's DOI

There are also links here to a number of different publishing sites, where you can see the standard rules for sharing with these publishers. Please note, however, that there may be journals that deviate from the standard rules.  

Please note that social network platforms are often not considered to be Open Access repositories. Therefore, not all foundations accept all social platforms as Open Access repositories in relation to reporting. It is therefore a good idea to additionally archive an Open Access version in Pure or another open repository.

Read more about the difference between Open Access repositories and social network platforms.