Nowadays, it is important to create awareness of or share materials relating to your work. The global shift towards making research findings available free of charge for readers, so-called ‘Open access’, has been a core strategy in the European Commission to improve knowledge circulation and thus innovation. It is illustrated in particular by the general principle for open access to scientific publications in Horizon 2020 and the pilot for research data.
Ways to aware and share your work vary from conversations with colleagues to multimedia sharing sites (e.g., Slideshare or YouTube). Other strategies include:
- Social networking sites (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook)
- Discussion lists
- Academic networking and profile sites (Table 1).
- Subject-based websites and repositories (e.g., arXiv, SSRN)
- Your own blog and website
- Posts on other blogs and websites
- Conferences and meetings
- Institutional websites and repositories
Figure from http://redrisestudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10
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Table 1. Academic networking and profile sites. |
| ResearchGate, EPrints Services, Eartharxiv |
| ResearcherID |
| Mendeley |
| Academia.edu |
| Google Scholar |
| ImpactStory |
| Elsevier’s “My Research Dashboard” |
| Loop |
| Kudos |
| ORCID |
The benefits of using academic network and creating profiles in such webpages (Table 1) are numerous. You can discover relevant publications, share links to your/other publications, discuss and comment on relevant research, find jobs, find collaborators, find applicants for a project proposal, track metrics relating to research performance, help people find and contact you, find and contact other people, post files such as your publications or other research outputs… In general, these web-design platforms allow you to assemble and create information help search filtering, share information to drive discovery, and measure and monitor the effect of these activities.
Tools for improving both the visibility of your work and your reputation are listed below:
- Presenting at conferences
- Blogging
- Communicating via social media
- Consultancy
- Industry engagement
- Teaching
- Winning funding / grants
- Winning awards / prizes
- Community contribution (e.g. activities for a professional body)
- Editorship
- Publication
- Peer-reviewing
- Commercializing your research / registering your designs / patents
- Collaboration
- Mentoring
- Engaging with the media
- Community contribution (e.g. activities for a professional body)
In addition, Kudos (a web-based service for researchers that aims to help them and their institutions to maximize the visibility and impact of their published articles) is undertaking a survey to learn about researchers’ behaviour, experiences and expectations in relation to building the visibility of their work, and managing their reputation. Results from this survey will be presented at forthcoming conferences (including UKSG and FORCE 16) and on Kudos’ blog in due course. Any researcher can complete the survey here and will enter a prize draw for an online shopping voucher of £100.
