We strongly encourage all members of Philica to prove to us that they are bona fide professional researchers as this helps build trust. For users, there are a couple of other big incentives to get confirmed status:

• Confirmed members’ reviews carry considerably more weight than the reviews of unconfirmed members.
• Confirmed members get a nifty little icon () that appears every time their name is seen, and on their reviews. This means people are much more likely to trust what they say.

As soon as you are confirmed, all the benefits of confirmation appear immediately and are retrospective — this means that your confirmed status icon will appear on all the entries you have submitted, even if you submitted them before becoming confirmed. Similarly, any reviews you wrote before becoming confirmed will immediately gain extra weight.

To get confirmed status
Philica membership is available to all professional researchers, both academic faculty (lecturers, professors) and research staff (research fellows, postdoctoral researchers, governmental and industrial researchers). To confirm your status, please send us a signed letter, on your institution’s letterhead paper, stating:

• Your name
• Your address
• Your Philica username
• The email address you used to register with Philica
• The name of the organization you work for, and the date you began your employment
• Your job title

As soon as we receive this letter we will upgrade your membership if everything is in order. Send your letter to:

Dr Nigel Holt,
School of Social Sciences,
Bath Spa University,
Bath,
BA2 8BN,
United Kingdom.