Do you share your papers online?

[ludite]

I was talking to a friend on the market and he told me that he thought a certain school was making cuts because on his academia.edu page he had had a bunch of visitors from the geographic location of the school looking at his papers.

Which brought me to the following questions: Do you share your papers online? If so, is it through your own personal website? Or is it through something like academia.edu or researchgate? Any downsides/advantages to each?

I ask because I honestly have zero net presence, other than a google scholars profile, and was wondering if it is worth it.

[don't]

would not advise this at all. risk for getting 'scooped' is high, especially from grad students without thesis/diss ideas or (sadly) from asst profs without original thoughts. several of my colleagues have had this happen. as a junior scholar, be very careful what you share, with whom, and when (i.e., distribute only those papers that are very near to being published). my two cents...

also, a trick i've learned is to name your presentation titles something different from the paper title. journal reviewers can unblind the review process by googling submission titles and finding conference presentations under the same name. this hurts junior scholars and grad students the most. my third cent

[Easy Access]

Yes, I would not post unpublished papers on the web. But I would put links to PDF's or to journal abstract pages for papers that have already been published. Making your published papers easily accessible allows the person looking you up who would curiously click on it to read more, and that person might not take the time to log in to their library to pull it themselves.

[only published]

I concur with the previous posters. I do have my papers on Academia but only those that have been published. And yes, do see visits to my page from the geographical areas (cities) in which the schools at which I applied for jobs are located.

[AnthonyMcNeil]

I consider that sharing paper documents is great. On whatever subject you like to make thesis like stuff and presenting it to the world makes a big difference. It is good. Iam a law student and has my paper presentation few weeks ago, it was good. So, I thought to share my experience and the data which I had to online world. This reference and important sources are my inspiration in law firm and possibly I want to become like them one day. Academics need to be motivated through various sources.

[waylon]

I'm glad to hear that you've had a good experience with this, Anthony. I can't say that I would be too keen to share unpublished works online. I just can't trust the world at large with my original thoughts that I would like to get published one day. I would definitely be worried about getting "scooped." Has this happened to anyone?

[prius]

Personally, I wouldn't put anything of mine that has been published online. I just think that's asking for trouble. I know that there could be some benefits to doing so, but I just don't think that they outweigh the risks.

[are you nuts]

Why would you not post published papers online? What risks/trouble are you worried about? Shouldn't you WANT people to read what you've published. I really don't understand the last contribution here.

[bots]

The posts by the new waylon/prius/ziggy members only make sense when you realize these accounts are all from the same source, a spammer playing a longer-term game trying to first establish credibility by make semi-reasonable comments in long-ignored random discussions. They may or may not be Russian bots, but they certainly aren't in the academic job market for sociology positions. One big clue: their first posts were in the "Atlantis: truth or myth" thread.