While these sites help you connect with others and can also provide useful impact data, they are not compliant with the principles of Open Access or the requirements for REF.
Adademia.edu and ResearchGate are also commercial services, which:
- make no commitment to long term preservation and access;
- are explicitly excluded by some publishers as places that authors can deposit their work (e.g. Emerald and Elsevier);
- and do not allow the University to access and monitor compliance data
For a more detailed exploration of the issues relating to the use of Academia.edu and ResearchGate see “A social networking site is not an open access repository” [accessed 07/07/2025]
