2.3 Support to service to society

The scholarship of engagement (service) promotes the application of academic knowledge and prevents its societal irrelevance. As put it by Boyer, it consists of “service activities… tied directly to one’s special field of knowledge” in the form of “serious, demanding work, requiring the rigor - and the accountability - traditionally associated with research activities” [36]. Even though analysis carried out for example at European universities in 2014 found that Europe’s academics largely prioritized research and teaching, with only 3 h per week dedicated to societal engagement activities [37], today a rapidly increasing number of scholars are active in community-engaged scholarship [38].
In other words, after a prolonged period in which the “historic commitment to the ‘scholarship of engagement’ has dramatically declined” [39], in the last decade (2012-2022) with the emergence of environmental, financial, economic, energy and geopolitical problems of intrinsically global nature the role of academic intellectuals acquired again broad societal relevance [40].
A personal academic website critically supports this part of the academic work by making publicly available past and ongoing activities aimed to the non-academic community, including activities such as public engagement, providing expert opinions, and consulting. The website may thus conveniently include public presentations, interviews, articles in the general press, consulting and expert witness reports, and videos aimed at the public. The aforementioned life scientist Olumuyiwa Igbalajobi, a post-doctoral researcher at Canada’s University of British Columbia, launched his personal academic website in mid 2021. Besides presenting his research in the field of fungal diseases, the website supports his societal service academic work spanning from fund raising to aid in the processing of passports for prospective graduate students from Nigeria [41].

3. Perspectives and conclusions

A personal website is a tool by which the effectiveness andscope of communication with all the “stakeholders” of academic work is enhanced. Through the website, for example, a scholar canfreely and personally communicate with prospective students, young researchers, colleagues, journalists, prospective employers, research funders and interested citizens, offering a coherent presentation of her/his overall work and approach to research.
For example, the website of neurobiologist Kay Tye created in the early 2010s included a “philosophy” web page describing her expectations for all lab members emphasizing “the importance of having a positive attitude, communicating honestly, supporting other lab members and taking care of oneself (for example, by making time to socialize and exercise)” [42]. Many applicants, underlined Tye in 2014, cited the philosophy statement “as a reason they wanted to work with her” [43]. On the other hand, “people who don’t identify with this philosophy won’t apply” [43]. This single example shows why a personal academic website developed from a mutually beneficial perspective (in which users can readily find the information of relevance to their needs, and scholars present their own expectations), will stand the test of time. The latter website indeed is still online and retains the same “Philosophy” statement in 2023.
Most researchers are not aware that for over two decades since the Web introduction, until collaboration between publishers and search engine companies was established, academic articles stored in publishers’ databases were actually part of the “academic invisible web” [44].
In other words, managing a personal academic website should not be seen as an obsolete activity that can be replaced by the use of academic social network websites, such as ResearchGate or Academia.edu, chiefly used to maintain a personal profile, posting links to published papers, tracking read (and recommendation) metrics, and finding recommended research papers [45]. Nor a personal academic website loses its value because social networks such as Twitter allow (beyond a threshold of 1,000 “followers”) to readily disseminate scientific messages to a broader audience comprised of journalists, members of the public, and decision-makers [46].
Thirty years after the introduction of the web [10], most world’s researchers do not have a personal academic website either in high-income [11-12] and in economically developing countries. Opportunities therefore abound.
The few, selected examples of the scholars briefly reviewed in this study show that having a personal academic website is worth the effort, with respect to each of the three main dimensions of scholarly work: research, education, and societal service [1]. Only a personal website, furthermore, can aggregate the research, educational and societal service activity of a scholar, as well as the aforementioned “scattered professional profiles” [15], making said activity freely and openly accessible to anyone having access to the internet (5 billion people by the end of 2022) [47].
An academic willing to start her/his own website does not need to learn the HTML 5.0 standard or the CSS style language, nor is required to learn search engine optimization (SEO) for proper positioning. The main technical guideline to follow should be to create a highly usable website, namely a website presenting information in a clear and concise way being at any stage of the website development easy to access and “navigate” [48].
Effective mentorship of students and young researchers requires to teach them how to write scientific manuscripts “in a manner that draws and maintains the interest of the intended scientific audience” [49]. Hence, it is of high educational value to involve young researchers in the joint development of the personal academic website, giving students for example the task to draft the news communicating to the public their research findings.
In conclusion, owning and managing a personal academic website provides clear benefits the research, education, and societal service activities of any scholar, whatever may be the scholarly field. As with any other online activity, the main risk associated with maintaining a website is related to unproductive use of time. The aim is to provide users with accurate, relevant, targeted, and updated content. This requires to focus on producing said content by allocating enough, uninterrupted time [50] to produce such content and publish it online.
Keywords: personal academic website; open science; academic profession; scholarship of engagement; self-archiving