Enhancing Your Impact - Tools for Authors - BeckerGuides at Becker Medical Library

 Source: http://beckerguides.wustl.edu/authors/eri

Strategies for Enhancing Research Impact

Establish Your Profile and Identity

• Authors
  are highly recommended to use the same variation of their name
  consistently throughout the course of their academic studies and future
  professional activities. If the name is a common name, consider adding a
  middle name to distinguish it from other authors or changing the name
  itself. Consistency enhances retrieval and helps to disambiguate author
  names in databases. Uniqueness of a name helps establishes a “presence”
  for an author. See Establishing Your Author Name and Presence for more information.
• Register
  for an ORCID ID. Registering for an ORCID identifier helps to promote
  discoverability among multiple information platforms and workflows as
  well as establishing a unique presence for researchers and scholars,
  regardless of name variants or affiliation history. Registration for the
  ORCID ID is free and privacy settings are controlled by the individual.
  See Create an ORCID ID, Add Information, Import Works and Connectivity.

ORCID provides a universal, non-proprietary solution by linking your publications/research activities to you.

• Check
  the website of the academic or research institution you are affiliated
  with to make sure that your name is noted correctly.
• Check out the Author Identifier feature in the SCOPUS
  database. The SCOPUS database addresses the issue of author name
  variants and reconciles authors who use different variations of their
  names throughout their careers. Authors are highly recommended to review
  their profile in SCOPUS to confirm the profile is correct, and set up
  alerts for their works. Authors can contact SCOPUS to request
  corrections to their name profile. See “How do I request corrections to author details?” or contact Cathy Sarli for corrections.
• Authors are highly encouraged to use a standardized version of an affiliation address using no abbreviations. The Washington University Style Guide provides guidance on how to note your affiliation and related information.

Enhance Discoverability and Dissemination

• Cultivate
  a series of academic and professional networks by participating in
  committees or other related activities. Volunteer for conference-related
  activities, participate in committees that issue position statements or
  clinical guidelines, act as a reviewer or Editor-in-Chief for a
  journal, serve as a mentor, develop relationships with policy-makers on
  the state or national level, be part of a team for conducting a
  systematic review, teach a Continuing Education class, serve as a grant
  application reviewer, participate in responsible conduct of research or
  curriculum committees affiliated with an academic or institution, serve
  on Institutional Review Boards or committees for animal studies, and
  other related activities.
• Follow reporting guidelines appropriate to your area of research. See the Guidelines for Reporting of Research box.
• Post a CV online and make it publicly available for others to view. One way to post a CV is to use the NIH Biosketch tool SciENcv available via NCBI.  
• Publish
  as much as possible. Publication productivity demonstrates willingness
  to share research findings and helps foster knowledge transfer. See Selecting a Journal for Publication for guidance on selecting an appropriate journal.
• Present
  preliminary research findings at conferences or other symposia.
  Conferences are an excellent venue for disseminating new research
  findings and enhancing your visibility. 
• Formulate
  a concise, well-constructed title and abstract for a work. The title is
  your hook to grab the attention of readers. A declarative title is
  recommended. Include crucial keywords (both natural language and
  controlled vocabulary words) in the abstract. Most databases allow for
  searching of words noted in a title and an abstract, and secondly, a
  clear abstract allows users to quickly discern the basis of the work
  when reviewing a list of results generated by a search query. It is
  recommended that authors construct an abstract that includes as many
  specific keywords that summarize the content of the work. What is the
  work about? Be specific in describing the work to enhance retrieval of
  the work in databases and search engines. 

See the classic 1947 work by Dr. Estelle Brodman “How to Write a Paper” on the importance of a title.

• Review
  the publisher copyright form for a manuscript and retain as many rights
  to the work that to allow for maximum flexibility to re-use the work.
• Consider
  the desired audience when choosing a journal for publication. 
  Topic-specific journals or journals published by a specialized society
  may disseminate research results on a topic more efficiently to a
  desired audience than general science journals, such as Nature or
  Journal of the American Medical Association. More specialized journals,
  even with a potentially smaller readership, may offer an author broader
  dissemination of relevant research results to their peers in their
  specific field of research. 
• Publish
  “negative” as well as positive research findings. Publication of
  negative findings leads to further applicability of research and
  prevents others from duplicating research.  
• Publish a manuscript in a journal that is currently indexed by PubMed/MEDLINE. Citations in PubMed/MEDLINE are “crawled” by Google Scholar which can help promote the visibility and accessibility of a work.
• Consider
  publishing a work in an open access journal. Open access journals allow
  authors to retain rights to the work that allow for many options for
  further dissemination of the research.
• Publish negative research findings. The Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine
  is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal that provides a
  platform for the publication and discussion of unexpected,
  controversial, provocative and/or negative results in the context of
  current tenets.
• Self-archive
  the final, peer-reviewed manuscript version of a journal articles in an
  institutional repository. Many major academic or research institutions
  have institutional digital repositories that archive the work of authors
  affiliated with the institution. Some institutional digital
  repositories allow for creation of specific online communities that
  showcase the research output of an author or group such as a research
  study, a department or a center. Digital Commons@Becker
  is the institutional repository for the School of Medicine and accepts
  most file formats including white papers, podcasts, slide presentations,
  posters, among others. Please contact Amy Suiter for more information.
• Consider making your figures available through FigShare and your presentation materials available in your institutional repository or on a sharing site such as SlideShare
  so that others may discover and share your materials post-event. You
  might also consider submitting your content to a permanent, citable
  archive such as F1000Posters.
• If
  the work relates to a research study, create a website devoted to the
  research study and post materials such as peer-reviewed versions of
  manuscripts of journal publications, conference abstracts, supplemental
  materials such as images, illustrations, slides, or specimens, progress
  reports, to name a few. Authors are encouraged to review any copyright
  forms to confirm that they have the right to post materials on an
  institutional website. If the right to post a manuscript on an
  institutional website cannot be obtained, create links to the manuscript
  from your website using the PMID from a PubMed/MEDLINE citation or
  persistent URLs/DOIs that link directly to the publisher’s website.  If
  the research study involves work that may be of interest to consumers or
  potential clinical trial participants, provide information tailored for
  the layperson.
• If
  there is a website related to a research study, website developers
  should utilize SEO (search engine optimization) strategies to enhance
  retrieval of materials by search engines such as Google.
   The web developer should confirm that the web page titles describe the
  content of the website and include the name of the research study.
  Metatags that note appropriate keywords should be included in the page
  header section. Search engines look at this “hidden content” and use
  this as a basis for search results page rankings.
• Add your works to platforms such as Zendodo, Mendeley, or Citeulike
  and start a “library” of publications related to a research project or
  by author and share the research project library with others.
• If
  a work pertains to potential translational medicine applications,
  consider including a discussion of how the research could translate into
  clinical outcomes. This may provide insight for policy-makers as to the
  potential impact of the research study. See the Aims and Scope section of Translational Research: The Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine for guidance on how to include potential translational medicine applications in your manuscript.
• Start a blog devoted to the research project. Check out ResearchBlogging.org
  which is a site that allows bloggers to write about peer-reviewed
  research, but also to share that work with readers and bloggers around
  the world to learn about cutting-edge research developments. Need help?
  See "How to Write a Blogpost From Your Journal Article."
• Create a podcast or video describing the research project and submit the podcast to YouTube. Many major academic or research institutions have created their own YouTube channels and provide video services at no charge. Washington University School of Medicine’s YouTube channel has many examples of videos created by authors.
• Issue
  press releases for significant findings and partner with the
  institutional media office to deliver findings to local media outlets.
  Be willing to provide interviews with the media that explain the
  research study or area of research.
• Tweet about your research. Many authors use Twitter to
  announce new publications or other research products. Include the DOI
  or a link to your article along with text to announce a new article.

Social
media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and many
others offer unique opportunities to connect and communicate with people
across the globe.

Contact the Office of Medical Public Affairs prior to launching any social media initiatives.

• Conduct
  outreach visits or provide seminars to other institutions/scientists,
  policy-makers, practicing physicians, consumers and health care
  providers to discuss a research study or topic related to current
  research efforts.
• Collaborate with authors and researchers from other institutions and from other subject areas.
• If
  the nature of the work is clinical, consider discussing clinical issues
  that arise with research investigators to help identify possible new
  areas of research to undertake, or vice versa. Such collaborative
  efforts help to accelerate translational research efforts.
• Publish
  in trade journals. Trade journals allow for a greater audience reach
  such as clinicians, consumers, policy-makers and industry. Increase
  awareness of your research beyond academia.
• Document
  all forms of research outputs such as journal articles, outreach
  visits, research data, conference materials, patents, etc. Keeping track
  of research outputs is crucial to documenting impact of research. See
  the Assessing the Impact of Research website to learn more about documenting the impact of research.

Enhancing Your Impact - Tools for Authors - BeckerGuides at Becker Medical Library