Tuesday 9 February 2016

How to increase the visibility of your research?

 Source: http://pitt.libguides.com/c.php?g=411864

How to increase the visibility of your research?


Introduction


Activities aimed at promoting research are increasingly important
in researchers’ work.  By making your research visible and accessible
you increase chances of your research being noticed, used and having
impact, thus increasing your own reputation and chances of success in
your academic work.



Researchers are embracing a variety of activities and tools to
promote work, connect with other researchers, and engage in scholarly
discourse.  Increasingly, the activities related to promoting their
research take place at all stages of the research process: from the
discovery stage, through analysis and writing process, through to
publishing, outreach, and  assessment.  1001 Innovations in Scholarly
Innovation project from University of Utrecht (see below) provides a
comprehensive mapping of traditional and newer tools to aid research
process.  



In this guide you will find descriptions of six steps to increased
visibility and impact of research activity, and recommendations of tools
that can help in this process.


1. Get unique author identifier ORCID to distinguish yourself and your work from that of all other researchers.

2. Share outputs of your research


Publications,
preprints, conference papers and posters, presentations, research data,
video, code are all evidence of your research activity.  By making them
all publicly accessible you increase your visibility, preserve your
outputs and make them available for future use.  Moreover, many
research funders in the US and overseas require that both publications
and underlying data are made available in open access.  A comprehensive
list of open access requirement for US Federal, US private and
international funders can be found at Carnegie Mellon University Library website.



Great places to make your research outputs available openly are institutional and subject repositories.  OpenDOAR is a comprehensive database of open access repositories.     



At the University of Pittsburgh, you can deposit your research outputs in d-Scholarship.
 d-Scholarship can ingest many types of research outputs (including
publications, pre-prints, working papers, slides and presentations,
dissertations, video and some data sets), is committed to ongoing
preservation of these outputs, is indexed by Google for improved
discoverability and use and provides statistics of use and impact of
deposited materials.  



Popular publication subject repositories include:



  • AgEcon (Agriculture and Applied Economics) maintained by University of Minnesota's Department of Applied Economics 
  • ArXiv - (pre-prints in Physics,
    Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative
    Finance and Statistics)  Currently maintained by Cornell University
    Library
  • CiteSeer -
    (Computer and Information Science)  maintained by College of
    Information Sciences and Technology at Pennsylvania State University
  • PhilPapers - (Philosophy) maintained by the Center for Digital Philosophy at University of Western Ontario
  • PubMedCentral -
    is a repository for US federally funded research outputs in Medicine.
     It is required for all publications supported by NIH (and some other US
    federal agencies) funding to be deposited in PubMedCentral.  This site explains the mandate and the process.

  • Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) is a collaborative effort of volunteers in 86 countries to
    enhance the dissemination of research in economics and related
    sciences. It is a bibliographic database of working papers, journal
    articles, books, books chapters and software     components.


  • Social Science Research Network (SSRN) -
    aims at early dissemination of social science, business, law and
    economics research.  It allows for deposit of both abstract of working
    papers and upcoming publications as well as full text of published
    outputs. 




Sharing research data 



A comprehensive list of subject specific and general science data repositories can be found here.  General science repositories, such as figshare, Dryad Digital Repository or Mendeley Data,
handle a variety of data and may be appropriate for storage of
associated analyses, or experimental-control data, as a supplement to
the primary data record. Some data sets can also be deposited in
University of Pittsburgh’s institutional repository d-Scholarship.  Find
out more about this option here.



Sharing other research outputs



​Slideshare, while not exclusive to the reserch community, is
great for sharing your presentations.  It supports PowerPoint, PDF,
Keynote and OpenDocument file types and provides basic usage statistics.
F1000Research is an option for researchers in life sciences.  It allows for free deposit of research posters and presentations (please note that publishing articles on the website incurs processing fees).  If you develop code, GitHub may be a great place to deposit it.  




3. Create and keep up to date online profile (or a web CV)


These could be simply your
personal and institutional web pages or commercial services allowing you
to highlight your professional accomplishments and areas of expertise.
 Below you will see a more detailed description of  few such tools.
 These tools, apart from simply allowing you to list your research
outputs will also provide you with additional information relating to
their use and impact (for instance, citation counts, downloads
or attention on the social web). 



 Google Scholar Citation Profile
is a popular tool to showcase your research outputs alongside citations
 associated with these outputs.  It also calculates some basic
bibliometric indicators of impact such as h-index  and i10-index. You
can create your GS citation profile by following these simple steps (please note, you will need a Google account before you begin).



  1.  Sign to your Google account, or create one if you don't yet have
    one. Use a personal account, not an account at your    employer, so that
    you can keep your profile for as long as you wish.
  2. Once you've signed in to your Google account, the Citations sign up form will
    ask you to confirm the spelling of your name, and to enter your
    affiliation, interests, etc. Enter your university email address which
    would make your profile eligible for inclusion in Google Scholar search
    results.
  3. Next, you'll see groups of articles written by people with names
    similar to yours. Click "Add all articles" next to each article group
    that is yours, or "See all articles" to add specific articles from that
    group. If you don't see your articles in these groups, click "Search
    articles" to do a regular Google Scholar search, and then add your
    articles one at a time. 
  4. Once you're done with adding articles, GS will ask you what to do
    when the article data changes in Google Scholar. You can either have the
    updates applied to your profile automatically, or you can choose to
    review them beforehand. In either case, you can always go to your
    profile and make changes by hand.
  5. Finally, you will see your profile. This is a good time to add a
    few finishing touches - upload your professional looking photo, visit
    your university email inbox and click on the verification link, double
    check the list of articles, and, once you're completely satisfied, make
    your profile public. Voila - it's now eligible to appear in Google
    Scholar when someone searches for your name!




 ImpactStory
is an online tool that allows you to showcase your research outputs
(publications, presentations, data, code, posters, etc.) together with
measures of their impact.  ImpactStory profiles an be downloaded as csv
or json files.  You can view a sample ImpactStory CV here or try it free for 30 days (annual subscription is currently set at $60).



The number and variety of data sources monitored for impact is indeed impressive, and include number of:



  • blog posts, Facebook public posts, Google+ posts, Twitter impressions, tweets, and news outlets from Altmetric.com
  • bookmarks from CiteULike and Delicious
  • downloads, views and shares from Figshare
  • followers, stars and forks from GitHub
  • readers from Mendeley
  • comments, downloads, favorites, views, and followers from Slideshare
  • followers, tweets (by author) and the number of presence in twitter lists.
  • comments, likes and plays from Vimeo
  • comments, likes, dislikes, favorites and views from YouTube
  • mentions in Wikipedia articles
  • html and pdf views from PLoS
  • citations from Scopus and PubMed Central
  • Number of times the research product was mentioned in the full-text of PLOS papers
  • downloads, shares and views from Figshare
  • package views and total downloads from Dryad and
  • whether the articles has been reviewed in Faculty of 1000 
 Kudos
is a new service that helps researchers promote their research
outputs.  It is currently free to use  and allows you to showcase your
publications by creating links to full text and including additional
 information like short title, lay language explanation, impact
statement and link to additional related content such as underlying
data, code, video, slides, etc.  In addition, it offers a streamlined
process of sharing your content via social media and allows you monitor
the results of that activity.



Kudos will monitor:



  • number of tweets posted by author to promote the publication
  • number of Facebook posts by author to promote the publication
  • number of times author has sent email to colleagues/friends with
    link the 
publication page on Kudos or with the link to the article page
    on the publisher’s site
  • number of visits to the publication page on Kudos that is generated by 
sharing activities via email or social media
  • total number of visits to publication page on Kudos
  • number of times the publication is downloaded from the publisher’s 
site
  • number of times the publication’s abstract is clicked on or viewed on the 
publisher’s site
  • a score generated by Altmetric.com (which includes tweets, Mendeley and 
CiteULike readership)

A brief YouTube video from Kudos provides more details. 


 
 
At the University of Pittsburgh, you can take an advantage of PlumX,
an online researcher profiling tool which collects and presents in a
graphical way an online impact of your research outputs including
articles, blog posts, books and chapters, clinical trials, conference
papers, data sets, figures, patents, posters, presentations, source
code, thesis and dissertation and videos.
 PlumX monitors Amazon, Bitly, Crossref, Dryad, dSpace, Facebook, Figshare, Github, Google+, Mendeley, PLOS, PubMed, Reddit, SlideShare, Twitter, USPTO, Wikipedia, WorldCat
and YouTube.  Learn more about getting your PlumX profile here.   


4. Engage in social networking communities


Another great way to disseminate your research and gain
reputation is through active engagement in research networking
communities.  These services will allow you to create profiles, showcase
your research outputs, identify communities of interest and participate
in discussions by posting and answering questions in your network.  All
of them will also let you know about impact of your activates in these
networks, for instance downloads of your publications, views of your
profile and levels of your activity as compared to others in the
network.


5. Blog


Blogging is also a great tool for making your research content
more visible.  When you write a blog post, you are creating content that
can be freely shared via social media.  Blogs content is freely
available and not limited by publisher restrictions thus potentially
reaching and influencing much wider and diverse audiences.  With a blog
you can become part of a network with whom you can share ideas and
engage in discourse in your area of interest.  This can enhance your
reputation as an expert in your field, allow you to gain valuable
feedback on ideas and broaden your professional network.



Kelly Oaks, a Guardian science writer has the following suggestions for those interested in starting a blog:



•Figure out why you want to blog and who your targeted audience is (potential collaborator, employer, guy on the street)
•Set it up (WordPress or Tumblr?)
•Join a blog network (e.g. ResearchBlogging or ScienceBlogs - see below for more detail)
•Find and stick to your niche
•Link to others and credit their work
•Remember the headline and keywords (so Google can find you)
•Promote your blog on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
•Be regular in your habit
 
Great tips on how to turn your research article into a blog entry comes from Patrick Dunleavy, Political Science Professor at London School of Economics.







6. Tweet


Twitter is an increasingly popular tool for researchers to
popularize their research and build reputation.  Below are some tips on
how use it effectively.     
  • Have a decent profile picture and text - this is how people will find you. 
  • Use the Twitter search (or Goolge search) to find topics that
    interest you - this will allow you to find and follow people working in
    your area - and they may, in turn, follow you back.  If someone follows
    you, unless they are selling snake oil, follow them back.
  • Look out for hash tags for events in your field
    (conferences/seminars).  Follow them, even (some would say, especially)
    if you aren’t there.  Comment on tweets that interest you or where you
    have something to say.
  • Set up search alerts to keep abreast of activity that’s of interest to you.
  • Use a decent Twitter app on your mobile and desktop devices to
    manage your activity.  (e.g. TweetDeck on the desktop and Echofon on
    your mobile device)
  • Tweet when your community is most active, and most likely to see
    your stuff.  Use a service like Buffer to schedule tweets if you are
    normally tied up in labs or classes when your audience is active.
  • Make use of Twitter lists to organize people you follow into thematic groups so that you don’t miss key things.
Is the effort of blogging or tweeting really worth your time?  Read here about experiences of Melissa Terras, Director
of University College London Centre for Digital Humanities, who took
all of her academic research, including papers that have been available
online for years, to the web and found that her audience responded with a
huge leap in interest in her work.




Six steps to increased visibility - How to increase the visibility of your research? - LibGuides at University of Pittsburgh
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