All this is cool and helpful. But there is one issue that really bothers me: who owns my academic profile?
I checked my "own" Microsoft Academic Search page. Microsoft's software tried to guess my details (affiliation, homepage, papers, etc.) and was correct on some details but wrong on others. To correct the details required me to open a Windows Live ID account. I was able to avoid opening such an account until now (I am not a fan of endless accounts) and would have continued to avoid it, had I not been forced to do so: Microsoft created an academic profile page for me, without my consent, with wrong details. Guessing that this page will soon come up in user searches, I was compelled to correct the inaccurate details.
The next step was even more disturbing: once I logged in with my verified Window Live ID, I tried to correct my affiliation and homepage and added a photo. However, I received the message that the affiliation (Indian School of Business) is not recognized (!) and that Microsoft will have to review all my edits before changing them.So who "owns" my academic identity? Since obviously Microsoft is crawling university websites to create these pages, it would have been more appropriate to find the authors' academic email addresses and email them directly to notify them of the page (with an "opt out" option!) and allow them to make any corrections without Microsoft's moderation.
2 comments:
To add a follow-up: I looked at Google Scholar and found a completely different story: I have much more control over my profile. By default it is private and it is my choice to make it publicly available. I can update information about my academic profile without Google's "consent". And, I can choose the inclusion of new papers either using Google's automated guess, or by Google emailing me and getting my confirmation. I like this better!
I am associated somehow with U-Conn. And no, I cannot change it! Funny how the search engines vary between their information gathering strategies!
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