Sharing your knowledge in open source: SlideShare and Scribd

As an academic, I often find myself conflicted on the sharing of my presentations and papers. On the one hand, we are supposed to do research to advance the literature and contribute to the global larger body of knowledge. However, with instances of plagiarism, issues of copyright and the fact that some of us actually make a living out of our knowledge, sometimes it becomes a bit tricky whether we want to share our Power Point slides or our articles/papers.

Before, I would just put up the PDF of a presentation in Power Point or a journal article, assuming this would sort of (kind of) ensure that my work wouldn’t be plagiarized. However, this is never the case, there’s always a way (if a knowledge thief wants to do it). But then, as I got immersed in social media, I discovered two tools that might be already very well known to you (but they weren’t to me): SlideShare and Scribd

SlideShare is, in their own words, a “community to share with the world”. You basically share your slide decks.

SlideShare is the best way to get your slides out there on the web, so your ideas can be found and shared by a wide audience. Do you want to get the word out about your product or service? Do you want your slides to reach people who could not make it to your talk? Are you a teacher looking to share your lesson plans? It only takes a moment – start uploading now, and let your slides do the talking!

For example, I found a presentation on water by Jeff Brenman:

Scribd is another publishing platform. In their own words:

With Scribd’s iPaper document reader, anyone can easily upload and immediately share their original works on Scribd.com or any other website. iPaper transforms PDF, Word, PowerPoint and many other file formats into an elegant web display. Your work can be shared with Scribd’s community of passionate readers, and because every word of your document is indexed for search engine optimization, your screenplay, novel or even sheet music and recipes also can be discovered by the world.

I found an interesting paper by the Tyndall Center on governance and climate change.

Conceptualizing climate change governance beyond the international regime: a review of four theoretical app…

I discovered Scribd and SlideShare through various of my friends who have uploaded their presentations from the WordCamp Whistler and Paul Hillsdon’s blog, so hat tips to them.

Now, the question goes to YOU – how do you feel about sharing your presentations or papers?

Be Sociable, Share!

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