Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Institutional Repositories And Academic Social Networks: Competition Or Complement? A Study Of Open Access Policy Compliance Vs. Researchgate Participation, Julia A. Lovett, Andrée J. Rathemacher, Divana Boukari, Corey Lang

Technical Services Department Faculty Publications

INTRODUCTION The popularity of academic social networks like ResearchGate and Academia.edu indicates that scholars want to share their work, yet for universities with open access (OA) policies, these sites may be competing with institutional repositories (IRs) for content. This article seeks to reveal researcher practices, attitudes, and motivations around uploading their work to ResearchGate and complying with an institutional OA Policy through a study of faculty at the University of Rhode Island (URI). METHODS We conducted a population study to examine the participation by 558 full-time URI faculty members in the OA Policy and ResearchGate followed by a survey of …