Surprised no one has suggested Knowledge Commons https://hcommons.social as an instance that is a haven for scholarly people. Perhaps more in higher education, but K12 educators would be welcome and well taken care of with the good moderation. Formerly Humanities Commons, it has expanded into STEM education and other fields to be more inclusive. Based at Michigan State University, it has government grants and other support to sustain its services.
I also recommend Knowledge Commons for blogging or maintaining a free Website. I was just starting to discuss research repositories and criticizing Academia Edu at https://hcommons.social/@SteveMcCarty/112609326085901837 without having space to suggest open access alternatives like Knowledge Commons. Its repository welcomes teaching materials, syllabi, and all sorts of genres, to which I've been happy to contribute, at https://hcommons.social/@SteveMcCarty
I'm in the #Humanities Commons instance, and we have free profiles like https://hcommons.org/members/stevemccartyinjapan that include a link to the old blue bird of Twitter, and members are increasingly leaving, so our admins at @hello might want to reconsider having that item in the next version of profiles.
How is it possible that books entitled "Decolonising Curriculum Knowledge" or "Decolonial perspectives in international education" are protected under a prohibitive paywall for students, the community and many researchers? If you really want to decolonize knowledge, use #OpenAccess. @academicchatter#Academia#HisgherEducation@hello
@gonzalo@academicchatter@hello Unfortunately for many researchers in the global south Open Access publication fees are simply unaffordable. I'm for open access of course, but the choice isn't a trivial one for many academics working in low income countries!
@j@gonzalo@academicchatter@hello Valid point! I'm from Nigeria, and this is common among early career researchers, starters and even for some academic... if you're current to the news about the south side, you'll know the fees are much to have a publication, else, open access is the way.
Veteran academics have grown used to pulling up the stakes of our yurts. In 1998 I noted in an online keynote address from Japan to the U.S. that EdTech early adopters were like so many masterless samurai roaming from site to site, so I founded the World Association for Online Education.
Like the migration from X to Mastodon, I anticipate a #migration from commercial to open source research repositories. Slideshare was acquired and monetized, although we did not sign up to have our IP sold. AcademiaEdu has gotten more restrictive to non-payers and non-members, while greater prestige alone might not sustain non-member access to ResearchGate. The reach those two offer for free is unsurpassed at this time.
However, in principle, and as circumstances change, a respository such as Humanities Commons @hello becomes more attractive.
Like the migration from Twitter to Mastodon, I would like to find that Humanities Commons - in my case: https://hcommons.org/members/stevemccartyinjapan (with nearly 10,000 downloads) - does better than ResearchGate - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steve-Mccarty (31,600+ reads) - or AcademiaEdu - https://wilmina.academia.edu/SteveMcCarty (31,500+ views) in connecting repository content with researchers and other readers, interactively. Perhaps browsing is more convenient than downloading, and commercial outfits have a stronger imperative to connect people.
Humanities Commons has many genres to select from, and I have uploaded content in 24 academic and creative categories. Successful research grant proposals seem like another possibility, and a research diary format would suit our India-Japan project on humanizing online educational experiences.