ResearchGate - Professional Networking
With over 1.3 million members, ResearchGate is the largest professional network dedicated to science and research. Members create user profiles detailing their fields of study, areas of interest, research skills, projects, as well uploading bibliographic publication information. Many journals allow authors to upload their publications to their own personal web page. Every user profile on ResearchGate is legally considered a personal web page, which means that copyright laws are always upheld. ResearchGate provides a collaborative workspace for researchers that, according to the New York Times' article of January 17, 2012, resembles "a mash up of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn". Since members can self-archive their work, ResearchGate can make it accessible to the wider scientific community. You can contact other researchers with similar interests or follow topics that match your research interests.
ResearchGate's publication database lets you search through 40 million abstracts and tens of thousands of full-texts. You can also simultaneously search through seven of the largest literature databases including PubMed, IEEE, Citeseer, ArXiv, NASA, RePEc and Cornell University Library, as well as thousands of smaller Open Access databases, to find abstracts or download full-texts.
Registration is free. Currently over 40 researchers from Wake Forest are members. Go to www.researchgate.net for more information. A link to it can also be found on the Carpenter Library's Bioinformatics Links site under "Learning Guides & Tools".