Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service - News from research support services

Category: Research visibility

Developing a plan for communicating your research

The following steps might be a good way to improve your online visibility as a researcher and assist you with communicating about your research:

  1.  Create and maintain online profiles (e.g. Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Academia).
  2.  Use persistent identifiers (e.g. ORCID, Researcher ID in Publons, DOIs) to disambiguate yourself as an author or to link to your work.
  3.  Publish in Open Access journals or choose Open Access options.
  4.  Use Creative Commons licenses for your work for re-use.
  5.  Self-archive pre- or post-prints to institutional repositories (SUNScholar).
  6.  Publish your data to data repositories (SUNScholarData).
  7.  Make social media engagement about your research a regular habit (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter)
  8.  Engage your audience in meaningful conversations about the topics that you are interested in.
  9.  Connect with other researchers by means of academic network tools (ResearchGate, Mendeley, etc)
  10.  Appeal to various audiences via multiple publication types (academic articles, news items, blog posts, magazine articles)

It will be important to check in on your goals often, at least once in six months, or when you have published a new article.

Get help:
Marié Roux
Faculty Librarians
Research Commons Librarians

Sources:
Library guide: Research Impact & Scholarly Profiles, University of California, Berkeley Library
Library guide: The Research Process: Improve your impact, Stellenbosch University 

Increase your visibility as a researcher

“Thanks to the internet, we all have our Gutenberg presses and the privileges they accord. For academic institutions, the internet is a largely untapped resource for shaping and sharing scholarly research.”  This quote by Amanda Alampi (in an article in the Guardian) highlight the transformative influence of social media and the internet, which allows researchers “to reach new audiences that previously couldn’t be accessed”.

A great tool to assist you in using researcher profiles and social media to share your research to a wider audience is this “peddle pad” created by the La Trobe Graduate Research School.

Next week the Library will present two ONLINE WORKSHOPS on how to increase your visibility as a researcher (follow the links to register):

Increase the visibility of your research (Tuesday 21 April, 14:00-16:00)

Learn the following:

  • Find and navigate social research networks (ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley, etc.)
  • Develop research profiles
  • Understand how to increase your visibility as researcher
  • Understand the role of science communication and social media

Enhancing the visibility of your research output through self-archiving (Thursday 23 April, 12:30-13:30)

Learn the following:

  • Understand the purpose of the University’s policy on the self-archiving of research output
  • Learn about the benefits of self-archiving as a means of green open access
  • Better understand publishers’ policies regarding self-archiving
  • Learn about the different versions of research output suitable for self-archiving
  • Learn about the different options of self-archiving research output

You are welcome to contact your librarians if you need any assistance on these topics:

Faculty LibrariansResearch Impact ServicesDigital Scholarship (self-archiving)

Developing your digital researcher profile

This video might be helpful in developing your digital research profile. It’s been published by the Open Science MOOC.

Think of this as a way of creating an online CV for showcasing your research. It teaches four tools:

1. ORCID – A persistent identifier for you and your research.

2. ImpactStory – A place to document how your research has been shared and re-used online.

3. Publons – A place to document your peer review activities.

4. Open Science Framework – A place to openly collaborate on your research.

The Library can also assist with this and a few other tools to develop your digital online presence. Attend the workshop Increase your online research visibility on 8 May to find out more or contact the librarians at the Research Commons.