Academia.edu and ResearchGate are commercial social networks aimed at academics. Both of these sites allow you to create a public profile, ask questions, and network with other researchers. These sites can be very useful for networking, making connections, and sharing information with other researchers.
Academia.edu and ResearchGate are also used to share copies of articles and other publications for free. Before you share an article on either of these sites, it's important to be aware of your publisher's copyright policy and whether it permits sharing through social networking sites. If you want to make your publications available for free online, a better option might be to share your work through Trinity's open access repository, TARA. You can read more about article sharing and copyright in our guide to TARA here.
There has also been significant criticism of academic social networks, like Academia.edu and ResearchGate, which you may want to take into consideration before setting up your profile. You can read more about some of these in the resources below.