5 easy ways to improve your article’s visibility and get cited | SAGE Connection – Insight

 Source: http://politicsblog.ac.uk/2016/07/19/5-easy-ways-improve-articles-visibility-get-cited/

5 easy ways to improve your article’s visibility and get cited

Posted on August 5, 2016

Amanda Chisholm


This post originally appeared on the Politics blog July 2016


So
you now have your research published. Congratulations. Yet getting
published is only a part of your journey. You now need to start to think
about the dissemination and promotion of your research.


In today’s academic climate, you are competing with roughly 2-million other published articles in any given year—of which only 2/3 of the social science articles actually get cited.
Given this context, you need to actively promote your work both on and
offline. Here are 5 easy ways in improve the visibility of your
research—and get cited.

1. Have a clear and searchable abstract and title:
   Given that over 50 percent of academic work is found through search
   engines, to ensure you have optimized your searchability on these
   engines, make sure your abstract is clear and captures the core
   arguments of your article. Think about the audience you want to have a
   conversation with and make sure the keywords you attach to your article
   reflect their interests. Include keywords that you think will feature in
   searches relevant to your article and make sure that you have links to
   your article on all your online profiles as well as your institution
   repository. Academia.edu, for example, claim that a link to your article on your Academia profile is likely to improve discoverability and citations.
2. Have a 30 word sound bite summarising your article and its contribution:
   Promoting your work does not just happen online. Face to face
   conversations are often the best way to get your work recognised.
   Describing your work in a concise way is not easy though, but practising
   the short sound bite will certainly pay off at your next upcoming
   conference/workshop. When you are busy networking with academics and
   practitioners you’ll be able to tell them concisely why they should
   consider reading your work.
3. Take advantage of Social Media: Post a link to your
   article along with a brief summary of its important contribution onto
   existing social networking communities
   on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Include a 140 characters or less
   summary of why it’s an important read. Politics helps promote the work of its authors by sharing journal and blog articles with its thousands of Twitter followers and growing number of followers on Linkedin.
4. Promoting your work through Blogs: Blogs are a great way to get your research discovered. You don’t have to have your own blog. Often journals have a blog that complements their print content. For example, Politics has politicsblog.ac.uk and invites all authors to write a post to promote their article. Ask the editors if
   you can publish a blog post about what your article is about and why
   people should read it. Additionally, approach the administrators of your
   favourite blogs and ask if they are open to publishing a guest blog.
5. Email and the wider web: add a hyperlink to your
   new article in your email signature line. Do the same, offering a clear
   summary to your article, onto your Academia.edu page, your ORCID iD profile, and university profile webpage and be sure to link all these site together if you haven’t already done so.

Amanda Chisholm is a Lecturer in International Politics at Newcastle University.



5 easy ways to improve your article’s visibility and get cited | SAGE Connection – Insight