Law Library


Scholarly Communication: Legal Scholarship: Scholarly Profiles

Scholarly Profiles: Why, Where, and How

What are the benefits of scholarly profiles?

Scholarly Profiles, like SSRN author pages and HeinOnline author pages, allow you to collect access points to some or all (depending on the profile) of your scholarship in one place. This makes it easier for researchers to locate your work once they realize you publish in a certain area.

An added benefit of some profiles is that they are integrated into research systems so that if a person finds one of your articles, they can easily connect to other articles. Other systems have easy alert options so other scholars can follow your work closely.

How does the Law Library help?

If you would like to learn more about creating or updating a scholarly profile, please reach out to Amy Koopmann at amy-koopmann@uiowa.edu to discuss options. 

Where can I create a scholarly profile?

A wide variety of places allow (and in many cases automatically create) an author profile for you. Below are a few popular examples that exist, but depending on your area of research, others may be helpful as well.

SSRN Author Profile
  • Automatically creates a basic profile when you upload an article to SSRN.
  • You can enhance the profile with a bio and links.
  • SSRN offers options to receive alerts when an author uploads a new work.
  • More information on SSRN Author Profiles.
HeinOnline Author Profile
  • Automatically creates a basic profile for you when your work appears in HeinOnline.
  • You can enhance the profile with a bio and links.
  • HeinOnline offers options to receive alerts when a new article by an author is added to HeinOnline.
  • Allows you to link your ORCiD profile.
  • More information on HeinOnline Author Profiles.
Google Scholar Profile
  • Provides an entry point into your books, articles, chapters, etc. through Google Scholar.
  • Easily allows you to see a broad array of sources citing your work.
  • Offers readers options to receive alerts when a new item appears in your profile.
  • Negative: some data and indexing issues.
  • More information on Google Scholar Profiles.
ORCiD Profile
  • ORCiD provides a method to disambiguate authors with similar names through a unique identifier.
  • Increasingly required by funding organizations.
  • More information on ORCiD Profiles.

 

Other common scholarly profiles are Academia.edu and ResearchGate. These systems, like SSRN, are businesses making a profit. The University of Oklahoma Libraries has a good description both of the considerations to keep in mind relating to Academia.edu and ResearchGate, as well as how to create profiles in each system at Understanding Academia.edu and ResearchGate.