Sharing Academic Articles Online

I've recently realized that making academic work available and visible is just as important as creating academic work. This is probably pretty obvious to most scholars and writers, but other than publishing in academic journals, I haven't focused a lot of effort on getting my academic work in front of other scholars and practitioners. Sure, having the article actually published in an appropriate peer-reviewed journal is vital, but there are many other things that can be done to get work out there.

I recently made the effort to share pre-publication drafts of most of the academic articles that I have written and had published in academic journals. I want to disseminate my scholarly work as broadly as possible, and while I've shared some of these articles in the past on this blog, I thought it would be a good idea to share them in a more systematic, comprehensive way.

So, here is how I now share my academic articles.

1. My Professional Site.  I had already linked to a couple of my articles, but I updated the list and shared nearly all of the articles that have written or coauthored that have been published or accepted for publication. I used WordPress to create the site, and it was surprisingly easy to create the page and import the documents.
   
2. Academia.edu. I created a profile and shared most of these same articles on that profile. The advantage to this (and similar sites) is that it allows you to tag your articles, which makes it a lot easier for people to find the article. In addition, others using the site follow those tags and follow one another, which facilitates sharing between affinity groups. The site is easy to set up and it is surprisingly easy to share new articles on the site.
3. Twitter and LinkedIn. I have already shared many of my recent articles using these media, but I plan to also share the other articles. I'll also link back to the profile on academia.edu so that the articles get increased exposure. Again, very easy ways to share knowledge.
4. This Blog. I have shared several of my papers here at this blog and use it as a way to share my current ideas and thoughts related to learning, instructional design, and success. I get a lot of traffic to this site, and one of my articles, Applying Merrill's First Principles of Instruction, has been viewed over 2000 times in the last year and a half. It has definitely been a good way to get my work out there. I use blogger for my blog, and it has worked really well.

I think this will be a good start. And another benefit is that I now have specific online locations to share my new articles when they are published, which will make it easy to access and share them with other interested individuals. Any other ideas on how to share academic work?

Related Post: Day 3 AECT 2012: Part 1 - Sharing Your Work as an Academic