Using Social Networking for Academic Purposes

Have you ever been surfing the Web and found sites for your research paper, but when you try to find them later, you can’t quite get back to that same site? If so, you might find it useful to use an academic version of social networking called Connotea. (Of course, you should also use Library deep Web databases as well!)

Connotea is a free online reference management service that allows you save links to all the useful articles, websites, and other online resources you find on the Web. Connotea is specifically designed for scientists and clinicians (it is sponsored by the Nature Publishing Group), but student scholars can use it, too. Because it is an academic social network you get “less noise, more signal,” i.e., better, more relevant recommendations.

There is nothing to download and nothing to learn. All you need to get started is an email address to use for registration. And, because it is Web-based, you will have access to all those sites you come across and later wonder, “Now where did I find that?”