Niels Schiller is a Professor of Linguistics at the Faculty of Humanities and works at the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition. His research fields are psycho- and neurolinguistics with a specific focus on syntactic, morphological, phonological processes in language production and reading aloud. He also has profiles on both ResearchGate and Academia.edu, which is why I approached him for an interview here on The Connected Leiden Researcher. I was interested to see whether he'd be able to shed some light on how he finds these networks to be different. He was kind enough to send me the following answers.

Why did you decide to sign up for ResearchGate and Academia.edu?

- better visibility and publicity about publications and projects
- easier to refer colleagues to your own publications etc.

What value do these networks add for you, professionally?

- colleagues can easily access or request my publications
- increased visibility and accessibility of my own research results

What is the difference between how your ResearchGate profile works for you and how your academia.edu profile works for you? Or is there not much of a difference in your opinion?

- I find ResearchGate more structured than Academia.edu - in fact, I regularly update my ResearchGate profile while my Academia.edu profile is less up to date. I don't know the added value of Academia.edu over ResearchGate.

How does social media work for you?

- I have a Facebook account which I use strictly for private purposes - in fact, I don't use it a lot
- I have two Twitter accounts, one for private matters, one for more work-related matters
- on the whole, social media do not work very well for me

Tips?

- keep private and professional life separate on social media