Online communities for academics

September 12, 2014 7:32 AM

I occasionally have questions that come up with regards to PhD work that I don't necessarily feel comfortable asking in person to other people in my program or to my adviser. Recently I've found myself wishing for an online community of other academics so I could get advice and share information in a pseudonymous environment. Are there any well known communities that fit this description out there?
posted by codacorolla to Education (15 answers total)

The forums at the Chronicle of Higher Ed.
posted by dr. boludo at 7:36 AM on September 12, 2014 [6 favorites]

Phinished could be an option. I haven't used it for a number of years, but the forums were helpful to me when I wanted to ask those kinds of questions.
posted by BlooPen at 7:41 AM on September 12, 2014 [3 favorites]

stack overflow and quora, depending on which field.
posted by empath at 8:03 AM on September 12, 2014

Versatile PhD is your answer.
posted by arnicae at 8:29 AM on September 12, 2014

If you are in STEM, do NOT miss, generally, Scientopia, and specifically, Drugmonkey there. Many, muchly good advices in his archives.
posted by Dashy at 8:40 AM on September 12, 2014

also, check your relevant professional society -- for example, SIAM (applied math) hosts a number of discussion forums for different research areas.
posted by acm at 9:01 AM on September 12, 2014

MathOverflow for math (and theoretical computer science). It's great.
posted by tecg at 9:40 AM on September 12, 2014

For general "academia" stuff not field-specific, you might try the chronicle of higher education (chronicle.com) forums.
posted by paultopia at 9:42 AM on September 12, 2014

I second the Chronicle forums (beware snark and do be as anonymous as possible). Also, Grad Cafe might be useful.
posted by wintersweet at 9:52 AM on September 12, 2014

The Chronicle forums socialized me into academia when I was in grad school at least as much as my (very good) doctoral program. But yes, they have a collectively itchy snark trigger finger, so I recommend lurking a bit to get a feel for the place before starting a thread.
posted by Superplin at 10:14 AM on September 12, 2014

Honestly? This site is pretty good.
posted by oceanjesse at 10:35 AM on September 12, 2014 [6 favorites]

Honestly? This site is pretty good.

Seconded. This site is excellent unless your questions are really esoteric. (And maybe even then, as long as the one member with the right expertise sees your question.)

Also, and this is dumb - Facebook has some professional groups that are pretty good, just because everyone is on Facebook. For example, both the Astronomers and the AstroStatistics groups are consistently informative for me.
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:25 AM on September 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Stack exchange - academia.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 4:15 PM on September 12, 2014

If you're a historian or humanities type, MeMail me. I'll be discreet (unless there's something that engages me as a Title IX mandatory reporter, but that's unlikely unless you're at my campus).
posted by brianogilvie at 7:35 PM on September 12, 2014

Thesiswhisperer is good but an Aussie focus. There are enormous differences between countries so as much as I like Mefi, it's pants at higher education outside the US context.
posted by geek anachronism at 9:41 PM on September 12, 2014