Open Access and social media

Social media can be a valuable way to increase the visibility of your research. However, some publishers have restrictions preventing their articles from being uploaded to commercial sites such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu.

Publishers differ widely in what they allow when it comes to uploading articles to networking platforms such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley and similar services. These rules are not necessarily the same as those that apply to self‑archiving in Pure, which is an institutional repository. 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:

• Open Policy Finder - by searching for the journal name or ISSN

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.