What is an academic website?
Academic websites is a general way to refer to an online presence independent of your social media or digital profiles (ORCID, ResarchGate, Google Scholar, etc.)
Academic websites devoted to a specific person will often include:
- Academic biography
- Curriculum vitae (CV) or resume
- This may be available as a PDF download, but take advantage of the ability to display the CV graphically
- Personal image (generally a headshot)
- Current research interests
- Portfolio (teaching, research, creative works, etc.)
Academic websites devoted to a lab or research team will often include some combination of:
- Team members
- Ongoing research projects
- Positions available for undergraduate students, graduate students, and/or post-docs
Benefits
- Maintaining your own site gives you the ability to customize how information about you is presented. This can be more beneficial than relying on standard pages typically found on university websites.
- Provide prospective students (in your classroom or assistants for your lab) a different way to learn about you.
- You can easily collocate content that may be dispersed across multiple platforms.
- If you're in your pre-career phrase or you may be moving organizations, then maintaining an academic website provides a consistent digital platform for people to learn about you.
Challenges
- Building a website can be intimidating, particularly if you plan to self-host (whether on your own server or through a company like Cloudways that manages the server for you).
- Having a website is a commitment. You will need to update the site to reflect recent publications and accomplishments.
