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Develop Your Digital Presence

On the left side, white text over a green background reads "Develop Your Digital Presence" and "Commons Showcase." On the white side, there three speech bubbles--one with three white lines, one with a heart, and one with three dots.

The TL;DR

  • Because of the customizable nature of Commons profiles, they are well-suited to showcase different kinds of work, ranging from traditional academic articles to videos and podcasts
  • Integration with sites on the Commons means users can create content on a Commons site that will automatically populate their profile

Represent your projects & interests.

Whether you’re an independent scholar looking to increase your activity in online communities or a graduate student starting to establish a scholarly presence, it can often be overwhelming to begin building a full picture of your work online. Maybe you have a limited amount of time to create a fully customized website, or perhaps you simply are not sure how to represent your projects in an effective way. 

The four main areas of the Commons—profiles, groups, CORE, and sites—allow users to create a multifaceted digital presence. Think of this as a networked approach. As soon as you create a Humanities Commons account, you will start building your profile. You can add custom text to many of the fields, or simply by engaging in activities on the Commons, your profile will be automatically updated. For example, any groups you join or CORE deposits you upload will show up on your profile. Between the information you provide and your Commons activity, anyone who visits your profile can get a better sense of who you are.

You can also use your profile to compile a digital portfolio–a curated space where you link to projects, conference presentations, and other information about you that goes beyond your Commons activity. Choose a few projects you want to showcase, link to them from the “Projects” section, and then write some contextual information so other users know more about your work.

A Commons user profile with the user's name, title, university, and social media handles. A cover image and profile picture are also featured.
A Commons profile featuring links to social media and projects

As you create sites, they will also automatically show on your profile, in addition to any blog posts you’ve written on those sites. This is another great way to make your work visible—writing blog posts on topics you care about can provide a wide-ranging depiction of your work beyond CORE deposits and Commons activity. Through this multifaceted approach, you can quickly and easily spread the word about your work. 

And if you’re looking for a social media-like platform to develop even more of a digital presence, consider joining our Mastodon server! Scholarly conversations are highly encouraged on hcommons.social, so you’ll feel right at home posting about your projects. Or, if you’d rather just make some new virtual friends and not talk too much about work, you can do that on Mastodon too.

Relevant CORE deposits

If you’re looking for further reading on how you can build an online identity, check out these amazing resources in our CORE repository.

FAQs

QuestionAnswer
Can I add my CV onto my Commons profile?Yes! When in editing mode on your profile, you can upload your CV file. This will allow users to click on your CV from your profile.
Can I upload separate resumes and CVs to my Commons profile?No, you can only upload one file to the CV section of a profile.
Is it possible to link directly from my Commons profile to my LinkedIn account?Yes! When editing your profile, you can add a LinkedIn URL. This will allow Commons users to go directly to your page on LinkedIn.

Examples

A purple web page with "About Me" in bolded white letters

Bonnie Russell ↗

A portfolio site designed fully on Humanities Commons through WordPress.

A Humanities Commons profile page.

Larissa Babak↗

A user profile with links to CORE, publications, and blog posts.

Support

Commons Help & Support

Editing Your Profile

First Steps: Getting Started with the Commons

Frequently Asked Questions

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Support Independent Scholarly Communication Infrastructure This Giving Tuesday

Want the TL;DR? We’re seeking donations to support our Mastodon server! If you believe this is a worthwhile cause and are in a position to help, we would be hugely grateful for your donation.

Academic communities need infrastructure, just as our local communities do. And infrastructure requires investment, which is why this Giving Tuesday we’re asking for your support for a new piece of infrastructure we have recently launched: hcommons.social, our Mastodon server.

Mastodon is an open source, decentralized social network developed by a non-profit that is gaining steam as an alternative to the increasingly unstable Twitter. For better or worse, Twitter has become an established part of the academic infrastructure, and while its issues have never been invisible, especially to those who are most harmed by them, recent events have pushed many to find a new space for their academic and social networks to live and grow.

We’ve long been in the infrastructure game, and see this new commitment as important to our work to ensure there are viable options for researchers, students and educators looking for an alternative to for-profit, extractive social media platforms.

Our experience also means we know that maintaining infrastructure is like the duck feet paddling hard under the surface of the water.

Recently, our Mastodon duck hasn’t been so subtle in its paddling as we find and fix the many kinks that have come with launching and seeing it grow so quickly. We’re thrilled that there has been such great uptake, and want to be sure we can continue to support this growth.

Clearly, though, with that commitment comes costs. And this Giving Tuesday, we’re asking for your help so we can continue to invest time and resources in growing hcommons.social.

Right now, our major costs are hosting and maintenance. The former we are currently covering with DigitalOcean credit and the latter is currently covered by volunteer labour. As a rule, we dislike not paying people for their time, so this is a big piece where we hope you as a community can support us to engage someone (or several someones) more regularly and adequately compensate them for their work. Right now, hosting is estimated at $150 per month and we’ve estimated support and maintenance at an additional $150 per month.

In addition, we are planning to establish a moderator community who can take on duties like responding to reported behaviour, approving new accounts and monitoring for spam. Once again, our goal is to be able to offer these moderators a small honorarium for their contributions. We’ve estimated this cost at $200 a month to start.

With these in mind, our goal for this Giving Tuesday campaign is to fund 6 months of hosting, maintenance and moderation for a total of $3000. Can we do it? There’s only one way to find out!!

If you’re as invested as we are in a future where communities build the product, instead of being the product, and in a position to contribute, we would be hugely grateful for your donation. And if you want to know anything more before making a commitment, please reach out to @hello@hcommons.social on Mastodon, or hello@hcommon.org (good old fashioned email).

Thank you for all your support,

The HCommons Team