Social networking and Open Access publishing in the Academy through Pronetos
Pronetos, which appears to stand for Professor’s Network, calls itself “a social network for scholars and an Open Access publisher. It provides an intuitively designed, real-time, web based community platform that facilitates mass collaboration and democratizes content for global distribution among academics with the ability to archive and search that content.” The FAQ indicates that “Only credentialed academics, graduate students, or professional researchers in allied fields (for example, doctorate level economists in government; medical researchers; think tank scholars; other scientists) can create accounts on Pronetos. Pronetos is by scholars, of scholars, and for scholars. As part of our mission, we want to help connect those in the academy, with practitioners, hence the connection with professional colleagues outside the academy.” So it looks like independent scholars such as myself who have made their reputation outside the Academy but work to the same peer-level standards may potentially be excluded from this network.
Most of the executive team and advisors to Pronetos appear to be from the Boise, Idaho, academic community.
Thanks to Gerry McKiernan for posting a notice about Pronetos on the WEB4LIB mailing list (02008 03 22)
David: Thanks for the posting. You will not be excluded from Pronetos! One of the things we anticipated was that we would have people from government agencies – historians like yourself, economists, etc. – who would want to join. Additionally there are lots of researchers in the private and public sectors – RAND, Cato, Heritage, Brookings, hospitals, pharmaceutical labs – who should enjoy our professional network. Lastly, people in professions – HR, business, law – all those people should find some fellowship with their academic counterparts.
We hoped that Pronetos could help bridge the gap between theoreticians and practitioners in any number of fields.
So – I hope that clears up the fact that in addition to faculty members at universities – our traditional base – Pronetos is a home to any professional scholar, graduate student, or professional where those professionals can find value in belonging to a discipline specific community.
[...] Ten Thousand Year Blog – Historian David Mattison asks whether independent scholars like himself are welcome on Pronetos (short answer: [...]