Most of ConnectedWorks has been considering how scholarly networking applies within a university. In particular, how researchers create and maintain their online profiles, and how they find and connect to each other.
But scholars work with each other within disciplines across institutions too - these ties may be as meaningful, or more so, as the connections within a university. We can imagine a vision (which is nearly here) where a researcher is a member of his university's scholarly network, so he can connect to other local scholars, and also a member of a discipline-oriented scholarly network, perhaps provided by his learned society. This means that the researcher can connect to others who work in his university as well as scholars nationally or internationally in his field. Nonetheless, this isn't a perfect setup; the researcher has to make two online profiles and log on to two separate systems, etc. For an early career researcher, who might be changing institutions every couple of years (or more frequently), through Masters and PhD degrees and short term post doc contracts, the network with scholars worldwide may be more important.
So ConnectedWorks has been looking into the prospects for scholarly networks organised by discipline, potentially by learned or professional societies. We've been lucky enough to have the chance to learn from the American Academy of Religion, who have been looking into scholarly networking, and we're now publishing our research report [PDF] - Scholarly Networking in the Learned Society, by Helen Burchmore, Anne-Sophie de Baets, and Laura James.
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