Social Networking for Scientists

We’ve been getting more and more questions in the library about how researchers can find information from other disciplines. For example, how can someone working on membranes in Psychiatry connect up with someone working on membranes in Materials Science? In a world where waiting for the published article is increasingly too late, we’ve been trying to find new avenues.

To answer the question above, I thought, ‘I wonder if there is a social networking site for scientists?’, did a Google search, and voila – Labmeeting!

The interesting part about Labmeeting is that it is only freely available to scientific researchers. You have to either get invited by a scientific researcher you know, or show online proof that you are doing scientific research. Or pay $99. Thus, not being a scientific researcher, nor willing to part with $99 for a look-see, I was unable to join.

A search on Duke presented 120 results and included the following:

Associate Professor at Duke University interested in the following topics: Monomeric lambda repressor, Ribonuclease P protein, Protein A, NMR, CD, fluorescence, stopped flow, amide exchange, dynamic NMR

PhD Student at Duke University interested in the following topics: In vivo model systems, genetic screens, immunoblotting

PhD Student at Duke University interested in the following topics: Photonics

Give it a shot and let us know what you think: http://www.labmeeting.com

Addendum: As William Gunn points out in the comments below, there are other similar tools which you may want to try. They include:

https://www.researchgate.net/

http://www.mendeley.com/

http://www.academia.edu/

http://www.myexperiment.org/

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