LinkedIn

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is an American business and employment-oriented social network owned by Microsoft. The platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development and allows job seekers to post their CVs and employers to post jobs.

LinkedIn allows members (both workers and employers) to create profiles and “connect” with each other in an online social network that may represent real-world professional relationships. Members can invite anyone (whether an existing member or not) to become a “connection”. LinkedIn can also be used to organize offline events, join groups, write articles, publish job postings, post photos and videos, and more.

Key stats

According to Microsoft, as of September 2021 LinkedIn has 774+ million registered members from over 200 countries and territories.

How can it be used for scholarly communication?

LinkedIn is a great platform to promote your research to professionals. You can build your profile and connections to share your research directly with those that follow you. You can also use groups and other connections to share your research.

How can it be used for research?

Twitter is a great place to recruit participants. You can connect directly with known individuals via the platform – or can reach out via articles and groups. There is also potential to use LinkedIn content for research, but this is ethically problematic as most of the content is open to connections and is not in the public domain.

Getting started

You can create a LinkedIn account for free and then take a look at 5 Tips to use LinkedIn in promoting your research.

There are a number of related links beneath this article under the see also heading.