Where do you preserve your digital scholarship? If you publish in journals, you may be using ResearchGate or Academia.Edu to share your publications. Is this a long-term solution? Maybe not. Are you working on a conference paper or poster? Save them at your institution’s open access repository.

From A social networking site is not an open access repository by the University of California Office of Scholarly Communication:

Open access repositories are usually managed by universities, government agencies, or nonprofit associations. Affiliation with a larger institution (with a public service mission) means that repositories are likely to be around for a long time.

ResearchGate and Academia.edu are commercial sites, whereas most open access repositories are non-profits.

You have open access options that are long-term. Take some time to look at The Catholic University of America’s Open Access Repository – Digital Collections . Look to the most recently published dissertations highlighted on the front page; or search the Institutional Repository link for the dissertations by school.

— Kimberly Hoffman