In order to improve the quality of systematic researches, various tools have been developed by well-known scientific institutes sporadically. Dr. Nader Ale Ebrahim has collected these sporadic tools under one roof in a collection named “Research Tool Box”. The toolbox contains over 720 tools so far, classified in 4 main categories: Literature-review, Writing a paper, Targeting suitable journals, as well as Enhancing visibility and impact factor.
There
are statistically significant associations between higher citations for
articles and the use of various social networking sites such as
Twitter, Facebook, blogs and forums. Twitter is a microblogging tool and
social media site created in 2006 that gives you a chance to share
quick thoughts using not more than 140 characters in a post. It’s a
great way to share your current research, publications and links to
achieve maximum publicity. Twitter assist you to stay current with the
literature and new developments in your field of interest. Proper tools
allow the researchers to increase the research impact and citations.
This presentation will provide various techniques on how microblogging
improving your research impact and visibility.
Having only joined Twitter in 2016, Clayton Lamb is a
self-described social media neophyte. It was only when a journal he was
submitting an article to asked him for his Twitter handle that he was
spurred to sign up.
“I thought, ‘I better get on board,
because they are going to be talking about my research and I won’t be
part of the conversation,’” says Mr. Lamb, who is a year and half away
from completing his PhD in ecology at the University of Alberta.
It was from this interaction that his curiosity was piqued: does
communicating one’s research through social media result in higher
citations for published research? Along with two other ecologists
(Sophie Gilbert, an assistant professor of wildlife ecology at the
University of Idaho and Adam Ford, an assistant professor at the
University of British Columbia), Mr. Lamb has published a study on the correlation between altmetrics
(alternative or non-traditional impact factors) and citations. The
three researchers looked at 8,300 ecology and conservation papers
published between 2005 and 2015, culling each article’s citations, altmetric attention score
and other descriptive data. They found a strong correlation between
citation rates and science communication through social media.
NEW PAPER: #SciComm takes effort, but it’s worth it. #SciComm = disseminate evidence, influence policy and conservation outcomes, BUT also associated with increased citations.
As for which social media channel is best, Twitter is the front
runner, since it used by many academics as well as the general public.
But Mr. Lamb, who was the lead author, is quick to point out that this
study is correlative, not causative. So even if there’s a very strong
correlation, it doesn’t mean that more science communication alone
causes a higher citation rate, he says. “There’s an obvious leap of
logic that you can make: things that are talked about more [on social
media] get out to more people, probably get read by more people and then
go on to get cited.”
Of course, if you want your research to be popular on Twitter, you
better be able to communicate it in a snappy way. “There is a new paper
published in my field almost daily. And I can’t read all of those.
Social media helps me discriminate between those papers because some
people put the effort into doing an infographic or tweet about them and I
can get a feel for that paper through that.”
Mr. Lamb, whose research focuses on tracking grizzly bears, says his
social media experience has been a bit of trial and error, but he has
been learning by following other scientists on Twitter and seeing what
they do to communicate their research.
“One thing I would say that is exciting about Twitter is that it
gives the public unprecedented access to what science is like for
scientists. For example, I was out in the field today catching and
collaring grizzly bears, so I might live tweet what I’m doing. At times
there is a distrust of science, and this shows us as real people, doing
our jobs. It gives people access to scientists that they normally
wouldn’t have.”
How to Increase Your Citation Rates in 10 Easy Steps
Increasingly, funding agencies and prospective
employers are demanding ever more from their potential researchers. In
the past, publishing in well-known international journals was enough.
Not any more. The new metric that is being used to measure the status
(and arguably the impact) of a researcher is the number of citations of
their journal articles. This is really tough on young researchers,
especially in fields that either move slowly or at least publish slowly.
However, there are proactive measures that one can take to increase
citation rates. Here are 10 of them.
1. Publish, Publish, Publish
If your research is only available as a thesis, there are only a few
brave souls who will read it. Many students when they finish their
doctorates are fairly burnt out. They are tired of their topic, annoyed
with their supervisor, and/or focused on their new job and new life.
Years of poverty (and possibly chastity) often temper one’s enthusiasm
for digging through old data to start new publications. Unfortunately,
amongst life’s uncertainties there are only two things no one can take
from you. These are your degrees and your publication. Thus, buck up
your pride, turn on your computer, and start writing. Do this every day
for at least one hour until your manuscript has been submitted to a
journal. Repeat this until every piece of interesting data and/or
analysis has either been published or is at least being reviewed.
2. Publish Where It Counts
Not so many years ago, the number of “reputable” journals was fairly
small. Now the choice of where to publish can be quite daunting, and
many of the options currently available are not particularly good. As a
simple rule of how to select an acceptable journal is to check that it
is indexed in the Institute for Scientific Information (more commonly
known as Thomson ISI or just ISI). If it is not, many academic
institutions will not consider it as having a sufficiently high impact
to be counted towards hiring or promotion. Not all of your publications
have to be ISI indexed, but most should. At a minimum they should appear
in Compendex. Compendex’s standards for inclusion are not as rigorous
as ISI but still much higher than many of the other indexing options
(e.g. Google Scholar). Additionally, unless you are in computer science
or a few other special areas, a conference paper holds little weight in
hiring and promotion decisions.
3. Check the Review Cycle Duration
Another consideration in selecting a journal is its review cycle. You
want to avoid having your paper in review for a year and then having it
either rejected or spending another year until the revisions are
accepted. Determining the length of the review cycle can be difficult,
but some journals publish the expected duration of their review cycle in
their mission statement. Additionally, you can always write to the
editor for this information. As a rule of thumb, if the journal does not
have an electronic submission system, the review cycle is likely to be
very long. Another good thing about journals with short review cycles
is that even if your paper is rejected, you can quickly get it submitted
elsewhere.
4. Make Certain There Are On-line Preprints
A related factor is the publication cycle. Just because your paper is
accepted does not mean that it is available. It may languor in an “in
press” status for more than a year. This is really bad. To avoid this,
many journals have now gone to electronic preprints. This means that
within days of acceptance the paper is assigned a unique digital object
identifier (DOI) and is electronically published. For most major
academic publishers (e.g. Taylor and Francis, Elsevier), this is now the
norm. Where this is not yet uniformly the case is for journals
published by professional or trade organizations. To compound this
issue, many of these publications only appear quarterly and can have
long backlogs. Thus, an accepted paper may not be published for an
additional one to two years. In today’s highly competitive climate, few
researchers can afford to wait that long.
5. Publish a Review Paper
Years ago, the top journals would not publish review papers, as they
were not considered as original research. This position has changed
quite dramatically as editors have come to realize that good review
papers are often highly cited. These citations translate to higher
impact factors for the journals (a factor on which many authors base
their decisions on where to publish; but impact factors are a subject
for another day). Thus, review papers are now fairly welcome. While one
cannot make a career of writing review papers, one or two well placed
ones can help greatly increase your overall citation count. As one’s
career progresses these citations become the basis for establishing
other indices that consider not only the total number of citations
acquired by each paper but the aggregate of the citations from all of an
author’s citations. How to Increase Your Citation Rates in 10 Easy Steps (part 2)
In part 1 of “How to Increase Your Citation Rates”,
recommendations were made relating to publishing all that you can,
writing a review paper, and investigating where to publish, along with
the specifics as to determining a journal’s review and publication
cycles. Five additional suggestions are provided below:
1. Use Open Repositories
An open repository is typically a publicly-accessible Internet site
that provides a no cost version of the finalized text, images, and
tables of published journal papers from individuals affiliated with the
hosting body. Most commonly this is a university or group of
universities. Due to copyright issues, papers are often not in their
typeset format. This will depend upon the publisher. There may also be
an enforced waiting period of 12-24 months. The administrator of the
open repository can usually advise as to the requirements. Despite these
modifications, your research will be freely available to anyone with
internet access. Many funding agencies, especially in the health
sciences are now requiring that all published output that was generated
from their funds is publicly available in some type of no cost format.
If your institution does not have an open repository, there are other
options such as ResearchGate (http://www.researchgate.net), which
promotes itself as a social networking site for scientists and
researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find
collaborators. Participating will also enable others to contact you
about your papers. Another option is to simply post your cv on-line with
hyper-links to non-copyright protected versions or with an email
address where researchers may request a version directly from you.
2. Get full credit for your papers and your citations
Due to publisher requirements, the exact format of your name may not
appear consistently on all of your publications (e.g. Debra Laefer,
Debra F. Laefer, D Laefer, DF Laefer) This may cause confusion for
organizations and algorithms that compile citation statistics. There
will be an even greater chance that you will not be credited with all of
the papers you have written, to say nothing of the affiliated
citations, if you have changed your name, changed organizational
affiliation, or have a common name (e.g. Brian Smith). One way to
minimize this is to consciously select a name under which you will
publish and stick to it. If you have a common name, this may mean
including a middle initial or name that you do not usually use. If you
changed your name, this may mea continuing to publish under your maiden
name, even if it is no longer your legal name.
Another way to help the situation is to set up a profile on Google
scholar (http://scholar.google.com). The system will also allow you to
identify where versions of your paper may appear with slightly different
titles, even though there is only one publication. This often happens
when a title has a hyphenated word or an author’s name is easily
misspelled. Google scholar also gives you an instantaneous way to check
your citations. Finally this will assist other scholars looking for one
of your publications to quickly check if there is related work that you
have published that may also be of interest to them.
3. Publish Your Data Sets
Archiving one’s data sets is simply good practice. Think of it as
using cloud computing to the “nth” degree. Datacite and similar
organizations can assign a unique digital object identifier to the data.
This allows you to increase your research profile and to have something
else with which to collect citations. Because of the high cost of data
collection, it also provides an opportunity to develop a reputation for
high quality data generation, even if others do not agree with your
processing or interpretation methods.
4. Let Others Know What You Are Doing
In some fields and at some institutions, sending out press releases
is common practice. Even if this is not the case at your current
organization, there is nothing preventing you from doing this (however
you should probably check with your institution’s press office to see if
their approval is needed for such things). Often such notifications
lead to small articles in science sections of local and national
newspapers or specialty trade publications. Another option is to send
your articles to colleagues and researchers in the area. Being an
academic is not for the faint of heart or the shy of spirit. Success
requires at least some level of self-promotion. So when you have
published something of which you are proud, let others know. Send a copy
to the top 5 or 10 academics in the area. Perhaps they will ignore your
overture, but perhaps not. With email and electronic versions of the
paper, all it costs is 15 minutes of your time and setting aside any
misgivings. The rewards could be fantastic including being asked to
give a guest lecture or to serve as a collaborator. It might even lead
to your next job offer. In short, there is simply nothing to lose.
5. When Appropriate, Cite Yourself
No journal reviewer likes to see a manuscript dominated by
self-citations, but if you have done previous work in the area in which
you are writing, do not exclude your own contributions from literature
review, as well as anything needed in the methodology or comparative
results section. As a rule of thumb, limit self-citation to a maximum of
three references and only include journal papers.
Increasing Citations and Improving Your Impact Factor
What You Can Do to Increase Citations and Improve Your Impact Factor
Quantitative metrics are important in the evaluation of scholarly
research as universities, governments, and funding bodies try to find
ways to make their hiring, funding, and investment decisions based on
measurable criteria. This has had a significant effect on journals
publishing, with the well-known Impact Factor functioning as a
ready-made, albeit controversial, indicator of the quality and
significance of a published piece of work.
At SAGE, we will help you increase article citations without “gaming”
the system with shortsighted strategies that can only compromise
perceived quality. We’ll do this by providing editors with the tools to
make informed decisions about types of articles and topics they might
wish to invite, which potential authors to contact for relevant papers,
etc. More generally, all our marketing and online activities are
developed with the aim of increasing citations.
When evaluating strategies to increase citations to your journal consider the following:
Recruiting papers from highly-cited authors
Analysis of the most highly-cited content from both your own and
competitor journals reveals the authors who could be invited back or
newly commissioned to publish in the journal, or to perhaps guest edit a
future special issue. Ask your SAGE Editor to provide you with a list
of highly-cited articles in particular journals or across your subject
category.
Identifying zero-cited papers
A percentage of articles may never be cited at all. Review
which topics do not attract citations and feed this information into
your publishing strategy. It is important to remember that some papers
can take a long time to accrue citations and although they were not
cited, that does not mean they were not read. Strike a balance between
maximizing citations and serving your readership.
Publishing more review articles
Comprehensive review articles are likely to attract a high
number of readers and citations. Active recruitment of review articles
is often required; you may like to consider appointing a dedicated
Reviews Editor for this purpose.
Publishing special issues or special collections Special
or themed issues on high-impact topics can attract a lot of attention
and citations. Including a review article that discusses the literature
can also help attract citations. For high-impact topics that don’t
warrant a full issue, a digital special collection is a good
alternative.
Article to Volume ratios
The number of articles or other citable items published per
volume will affect the Impact Factor calculation. SAGE is on hand to
advise you on how to ensure that the ratio is optimized and that
Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters and ISI) is indexing your
content appropriately.
Reminding authors and reviewers of relevant papers previously published in the journal Though very high levels of self-citation (more than 20%) is
frowned upon in scholarly publishing, it is perfectly common for your
authors to cite work from articles previously published in the journal.
Reviewers could be encouraged to check that submitted papers are making
sufficient reference to the journal. Making journal self-citation a
condition for publication, however, or specifying particular citations
to submitting authors, is unethical and should not be done.
Free access campaigns Alert your SAGE Editor of any topical
or otherwise potentially citable articles or special issues that could
be made freely available, and then ask the author to help promote their
work within their networks. Also, make sure you are signed up to receive
SAGE Journal email alerts (journals.sagepub.com/ alerts) so that you
are aware of when we are running any global free trials. Notify your
colleagues and encourage them to read and cite the journal!
Media promotion
Newsworthy
articles may benefit from Public Relations efforts and are available on a
case-by-case basis to raise the visibility of particular articles, and
highlight new and important research. Contact your SAGE Editor if you
accept an article that you think may draw wide public attention. We have
a range of options including a press release, blog post, social media,
or a media pitch to The Conversation.
Are 90% of academic papers really never cited? Reviewing the literature on academic citations..
Remler, Dahlia
(2014)
Are 90% of academic papers really never cited? Reviewing the literature on academic citations..Impact of Social Sciences Blog
(23 Apr 2014).
Blog Entry.
It is widely
accepted that academic papers are rarely cited or even read. But what
kind of data lies behind these assertions? Dahlia Remler takes a look at
the academic research on citation practices and finds that whilst it is
clear citation rates are low, much confusion remains over precise
figures and methods for determining accurate citation analysis. In her
investigation, Remler wonders whether academics are able to answer these
key questions. But expert evaluation has indeed correctly discredited
the overblown claim resulting from embellished journalism.
Debate over the
future of scholarly publishing felt remote to Kathryn M. Jones, an
associate professor of biology at Florida State University — that is,
until she attended a Faculty Senate meeting last year.
There she learned that the library might
renegotiate its $2-million subscription with the publishing behemoth
Elsevier, which would limit her and her colleagues’ access to
groundbreaking research. Horror sank in. Like other experimental
scientists, Jones regularly skims articles published in subscription
journals to plan future experiments. What would happen if she couldn’t
access that body of important work with the click of a button?
Though initiatives to make published
research more freely available have for years poked at the publishing
industry’s armor, these efforts — known as the open-access movement —
have not toppled the norms of how academic work is distributed and read.
Titans like Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley own troves of journals
that enjoy immense respect in academe. In the dominant system, a person
can read newly published research in one of two ways: pay a one-time
fee to obtain an article locked behind a paywall, or get it through a
campus library, which may pay millions of dollars for subscriptions.
That may soon change. Smaller-scale efforts
are mixing with top-down decisions — through universities’ subscription
negotiations and a major European plan that mandates open-access
publication for certain research — to put unusual pressure on
publishers.
Don’t think these battles are confined to
the library or an individual discipline. The changes have the potential
to alter nearly everything about how research is disseminated — and
therefore how departments spend money, researchers collaborate, and
faculty careers advance.
“There is reason to believe we are at a true
tipping point in transforming this industry,” says Jeffrey K.
MacKie-Mason, university librarian at the University of California at
Berkeley, who helped lead that university system’s negotiations with
Elsevier. “We are getting enough alignment and actual action on the part
of providers of research and readers of research to change the
intermediary — the publishing industry.”
It won’t be easy in a landscape still
dominated by subscription publishing. One major challenge will be
incorporating open-access principles into the existing work culture of
faculty members and researchers, who have a huge incentive to publish in
known subscription journals because of their prestige. Some worry about
other unintended consequences.
The European plan “changed the conversation quite substantially.”
Despite her qualms, Jones supported Florida
State’s desire to reduce costs through negotiations. Her mother was a
public-school librarian, and Jones knew budgets were tight. She even
publishes many of her own articles under an open-access model.
After doing some research, she learned that
other universities were also renegotiating big packages. If that’s the
trend, she thought, maybe we are just stupid to keep paying at this
rate.
Florida State decided to halve the cost of
its Elsevier contract, paying about $1 million to subscribe to the 150
most-used journals, as identified by faculty members, instead of the
more than 1,800 journals they could read as part of the bundle.
Budgetary strain was the prime cause, but in announcing the decision,
the library also noted its broader support for the open-access movement.
The Faculty Senate supported the libraries unanimously.
So Jones searched for keywords — including
"bacterial exopolysaccharide" and “rhizobium” — in the journals that
didn’t make the cut, and then downloaded those issues before access ran
out. The files gobble up space on an external drive, but she says easier
access for the near-term future is worth the burden.
The ideal solution, Jones realized, didn’t exist. “We were just trying to throw as many journals as we could into the lifeboat.”
Complicating any
discussion about open access is that many groups that agree in
principle that research should be free to read disagree with the
particulars of how that should happen. Those tensions emerged in the
fall when a group of major European funding agencies took on the mantle
of change through a new initiative: Plan S.
There are two predominant ways to publish
under an open-access model. “Gold” open access imposes a processing
charge on a researcher, university, or funding agency before an article
is released — but after that, anyone can read that article free of
charge, immediately after publication, and there are looser restrictions
on republication.
Many federal agencies under the Obama
administration started requiring “green” open access for the articles
they funded — in which a version of an article is published in a free
repository in addition to in any subscription journal. That free version
may be subject to a delayed release.
Some open-access supporters say research is
truly open only when all content is freely accessible, with no copyright
restrictions for re-use. Other proponents say certain restrictions are
OK, including limiting commercial use. Article-processing fees covering
formatting, coordinating peer review, and digital housing can be a few
thousand dollars. Some fear that those charges could soar, making
publishing less accessible. (Processing fees are high in more-selective
journals, some publishers say, because it takes effort and time to weed
through articles.)
Under Plan S the research financed by
members of the coalition must be published in compliant open-access
journals by 2020, made accessible without any embargo. The funding
agencies include national research foundations in about a dozen European
countries, in addition to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in
the United States and the Wellcome Trust in Britain.
Collectively, the original signatories
financed more than 20 percent of the scholarly articles published in
their countries in 2017, and 3.3 percent of scholarly articles published
that year worldwide, according to the consulting and advisory firm
Delta Think. More funding agencies have since expressed support,
including in China, according to Robert-Jan Smits, open-access envoy for
the European Commission.
The announcement of Plan S raised cheers —
and questions. To boosters of open-access publishing, it showed that
major foundations had soured on expensive subscription journals and that
large-scale change was on the way.
ADVERTISEMENT
“It is only through a concerted and
coordinated approach across national funders that the necessary progress
can be made,” says Carlos Moedas, the European commissioner for
research, science, and innovation, in a statement strongly encouraging other funding bodies to follow suit.
But resistance to the announcement was
swift. Lynn Kamerlin, a professor of structural biology at Sweden’s
Uppsala University, coordinated an open letter against Plan S that more
than 1,600 people signed. She says the top-down mandate made researchers
bristle.
It “threatens to shatter researchers’
trust,” she says. “It’s a worrying moment — the grass roots is where you
need it. The research community should take the lead.”
One concern outlined in the petition was the
risk that individual researchers would see lower international rankings
and standings if they could not publish in top journals.
Charles T. Watkinson, associate university
librarian for publishing at the University of Michigan and director of
the university’s press, thinks about equity when he considers
publication driven by article-processing fees. Academics at small
colleges and in the humanities are less likely to have money from their
institution or their funding agency to cover article-processing charges,
he says. Watkinson serves on the oversight committee of Lever Press, an
open-access book publisher backed by a group of liberal-arts college
libraries.
“How can we support scholars who don’t have funding coming with them?” he asks. “Plan S is driven by very well-funded fields.”
Haakon Gjerløw, a Ph.D. fellow in political
science at the University of Oslo, fears that the plan will isolate him
from researchers in the United States and other countries whose central
funding agencies do not support it. It depends on how the plan is
implemented, guidance for which was collected through early February.
Gjerløw has worked with a social-science project called Varieties of Democracy for
more than three years and has valued collaborating with American
academics. Data collection was paid for by agencies that support Plan S.
He says he would understand if American researchers no longer wanted to
work on a project that had to adhere to strict open-access rules,
potentially limiting any ability to publish in a top journal.
“They do not have any great incentive to
cooperate across the Atlantic,” he says. “It could end up being a waste
of time if you couldn’t get any academic credit out of it.”
Plan S aspires to increase global science
collaboration by making results “widely available without paywall and
delays,” wrote Smits in an email.
“I always thought that scientists were
collaborating at [the] international level to extend in partnership the
frontiers of knowledge, address the grand societal challenges, transfer
knowledge to industry and train the next generation of researchers,” he
said. “If scientists now tell you that they will no longer collaborate
globally if they will not be allowed to publish behind expensive
paywalls, the time might have come for a more fundamental debate of the
role of science in our society.”
“Libraries are under great pressure ... to cut back on the number of materials they collect.”
Smits said that Plan S organizers have heard
from certain fields that not enough open-access outlets exist. The
coalition, he said, is analyzing this gap and has pledged to offer
incentives for the development of new open-access platforms.
It makes sense for the foundations to force
change, he wrote, because “not much progress has been made” in expanding
open access in more than two decades. “Funders are now taking their
responsibility through ‘the power of the purse.’ ”
In 2015, Johan Rooryck felt prepared to resign as editor of the Elsevier-owned linguistics publication Lingua. For
a while, he could convince himself that he worked for the good of his
field, for academe. But looking into Elsevier’s profits made him think
differently about his work. After a high-profile boycott of Elsevier in
2012, academics he respected told him they didn’t want to perform peer
review for Lingua anymore.
He started, very slowly, to feel like a bad guy. They’re holding all the strings, he thought to himself.
He and his editorial colleagues decided to
resign. Their goal was to orchestrate a so-called “flip” of the journal —
a transfer of the leadership team that edited Lingua to a new open-access publication.
Because the publication had the same
editorial team, he expected it would not confront questions of quality
that plagued other open-access journals.
Rooryck reeled in half a million euros from
the Association of Dutch Universities and other groups and devised a
longer-term solution, in which the nonprofit Open Library for the
Humanities would pay processing fees of individual articles — and try to
spread the practice of “flipping” to others.
TAKEAWAYS:
Bottom-up efforts and top-down decrees make this a major turning point for open-access publishing.
Some large library systems are pursuing new
types of subscription packages with publishers. Negotiators want one
package that would cover subscription charges and open-access publishing
fees.
National research foundations in about a dozen
European countries have joined a coalition that would force the
academics they fund to publish their research under an open-access
model. Comments on implementation were due in February.
One challenge: Departments largely do not consider open-access publication in their promotion-and-tenure decisions.
The editors sent a letter to Elsevier that announced their resignation and started a new open-access publication called Glossa. They had the support of writers and reviewers, some of whom withdrew their articles from Lingua and submitted them to Glossa for
publication. And he heard from readers as far away as Indonesia and
South Africa who were thrilled to be able to read the articles without
paying. It was satisfying, feeling like he had changed something for the
better.
Since then, Rooryck has heard from editors at other publications who ask for advice in flipping their own journals.
He is frank in his responses: You have to
be careful, he counsels. A publisher, he says, “has much more money than
you do and has much better lawyers than you do.”
Rooryck also had the advantage of name recognition and experience — he started editing Lingua in 1999.
Gemma Hersh, Elsevier’s vice president for
global policy, says that when editors leave to start an open-access
journal, “We wish them the very best of luck.” Lingua’s impact
factor, measuring citations of published articles over several years,
dropped from 2015 to 2016 but rose again in 2017. Glossa has not yet received one because it has not existed long enough, Rooryck says.
Rooryck leads two groups that aim to
transition subscriptions to open-access journals, one centered on the
field of linguistics called LingOA that flipped several journals but
doesn’t have the money to do more. The Fair Open Access Alliance also
works with editors and advisory boards who want to flip their journals
to open access. They issued a statement in support of Plan S in 2018.
Rooryck agrees with those who say that the
open-access movement had reached a turning point. Plan S “changed the
conversation quite substantially,” he says. The next step, he says, is
for more university libraries to stop paying for subscriptions, freeing
up money to support open-access publication of their faculty members’
work.
“What we do is bottom up,” he says. “But for
once, the bottom-up effort and the top-down effort meet — in the
principles we share.”
It was only a
matter of time before Emily L. Dennis got another request to review a
pending academic paper. They pop into her inbox a few times a month, and
she says yes regularly. But an email in December from the University of
California at Los Angeles, where she completed her Ph.D. in
neuroscience, changed that consideration.
One of America’s top research universities
was calling for a boycott. As the UC system negotiated its contract with
Elsevier, UCLA urged affiliated academics to consider declining to
peer-review articles for that publisher’s journals. The letter also
asked faculty members to consider publishing research in other journals,
particularly prestigious open-access publications.
Dennis, now a postdoctoral scholar at
Harvard University, hadn’t been following the UC negotiations closely,
nor was she particularly attuned to the open-access debate. But, reading
the email, she started to think differently about the time she spent
reviewing articles for for-profit companies without compensation.
Dennis respects many Elsevier journals, and
she’s not sure how she’ll handle the decision of where to publish her
future work if negotiations don’t improve before then. “I don’t want to
be the stick in the mud who says, ‘No, we can’t submit here.’ ”
Still, she decided to join the boycott.
The very next day, when asked, she declined to review a submission for
an Elsevier-owned journal. “I don’t feel it’s worth my time right now.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Negotiations in good faith continued through
January, a month after the contract was set to expire, and at the end
of the month the university said access was expected to continue amid
the discussions. But in many respects, Ivy Anderson and MacKie-Mason,
the lead UC negotiators on the Elsevier contract, are relying on people
like Dennis to carry forward their vision for the system’s library
contracts even after negotiations have concluded.
Their ultimate goal? Having one package that would cover subscription charges and open-access publishing fees,
meaning that articles published by UC faculty members would be
available freely around the globe. The vision is to transfer the
financial burden of reading research from readers to the researchers,
their universities, or funding agencies. UC’s prior five-year contract
with Elsevier cost about $50 million.
Darrell W. Gunter worked at Elsevier for
more than a decade starting in the 1990s. The constant refrain he heard
from universities in the early 2000s, he says, was that they needed an
"orderly retreat" from the Big Deal — journal packages sold in bulk by
major publishers — because library budgets couldn’t absorb the rising
costs of the bundles. (Publishers argue that they offer more value as
more pieces are published annually.)
"Libraries are under great pressure from
their administration to cut back on the number of materials they
collect," Gunter says. "You have this natural friction. You can’t
subscribe to everything, so you have to pick and choose."
Publishers are aware that something is
broken, Gunter says, and he expects disruption to come. Years ago, major
publishers wouldn’t want to talk about open access at all, he says.
Hersh, Elsevier’s vice president for global
policy, says the company responds to what customers ask for and evolves
its business in line with those needs. It’s not the company’s job, she
says, to move researchers to publish in one way or another; it’s to
reflect what researchers want.
The company publishes more than 170
open-access journals and more than 1,850 hybrid journals, and every
journal allows authors to publish a version of the paper open-access,
often with an embargo period.
"Yes, open access is important. It’s
important to our customers," says Hersh. "We’re also seeing that
subscription is really, really important."
The California system isn’t the first to
advocate for aspects of this model, and Elsevier certainly isn’t the
only company that sells big bundles to libraries. Six universities,
including two in the United States, canceled Big Deal bundles for 2018
with Springer Nature, Elsevier, and Wiley, according to the Scholarly
Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, which tracks cancellations
and promotes changing the structure and culture of publishing to promote
open access.
In June, the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology announced an agreement with the Royal Society of Chemistry, a
professional association that publishes dozens of journals. Through the
agreement, MIT subscribed to the society’s articles with the guarantee
that any MIT-authored article published in those journals could be read
freely, anywhere in the world.
University of California negotiators expect
others to follow that model soon. "There is a recognition beginning to
develop in the U.S.," Anderson says, "that maybe this direction is a
reasonable one to pursue."
"The open-access conversation is going mainstream in a way it hasn’t before.
Chronicle subscribers and site-license holders have complimentary access to The Trends Report. To purchase the report separately, please visit our online store.
Lucy Taylor received her PhD from the University of Oxford, UK, in 2018.Credit: Susanne Vogel
Starting a PhD can be tough. Looking back, there are many
things I wish I’d known at the beginning. Here, I have curated a list of
advice from current PhD students and postdoctoral researchers from the
Department of Zoology at my institution, the University of Oxford, UK,
to aid new graduate students. 1. Maintain a healthy
work–life balance by finding a routine that works for you. It’s better
to develop a good balance and work steadily throughout your programme
than to work intensively and burn out. Looking after yourself is key to
success. 2. Discuss expectations with your supervisor.
Everyone works differently. Make sure you know your needs and
communicate them to your supervisor early on, so you can work
productively together. 3. Invest time in literature
reviews. These reviews, both before and after data collection, help you
to develop your research aims and conclusions. 4. Decide
on your goals early. Look at your departmental guidelines and then
establish clear PhD aims or questions on the basis of your thesis
requirements. Goals can change later, but a clear plan will help you to
maintain focus. 5. “I don’t need to write that down, I’ll
remember it” is the biggest lie you can tell yourself! Write down
everything you do — even if it doesn’t work. This includes meeting
notes, method details, code annotations, among other things. 6.
Organize your work and workspace. In particular, make sure to use
meaningful labels, so you know what and where things are. Organizing
early will save you time later on. 7. It’s never too early
to start writing your thesis. Write and show your work to your
supervisor as you go — even if you don’t end up using your early work,
it’s good practice and a way to get ideas organized in your head. 8.
Break your thesis down into SMART (specific, measurable, attainable,
relevant and timely) goals. You will be more productive if your to-do
list reads “draft first paragraph of the results” rather than “write
chapter 1”. Many small actions lead to one complete thesis. 9.
The best thesis is a finished thesis. No matter how much time you spend
perfecting your first draft, your work will come back covered in
corrections, and you will go through more drafts before you submit your
final version. Send your drafts to your supervisor sooner rather than later. 10.
Be honest with your supervisor. Let them know if you don’t understand
something, if you’ve messed up an experiment or if they forgot to give
you feedback. The more honest you are, the better your relationship will
be. Helping your supervisor to help you is key. 11. Back up your work! You can avoid many tears by doing this at least weekly. 12.
Socialize with your lab group and other students. It’s a great way to
discuss PhD experiences, get advice and help, improve your research and
make friends. 13. Attend departmental seminars and
lab-group meetings, even (or especially) when the topic is not your area
of expertise. What you learn could change the direction of your
research and career. Regular attendance will also be noticed. 14.
Present your research. This can be at lab-group meetings, conferences
and so on. Presenting can be scary, but it gets easier as you practise,
and it’s a fantastic way to network and get feedback at the same time. 15.
Aim to publish your research. It might not work out, but drafting
articles and submitting them to journals is a great way to learn new
skills and enhance your CV. 16. Have a life outside work.
Although your lab group is like your work family, it’s great for your
mental health to be able to escape work. This could be through sport,
clubs, hobbies, holidays or spending time with friends. 17.
Don’t compare yourself with others. Your PhD is an opportunity to
conduct original research that reveals new information. As such, all PhD
programmes are different. You just need to do what works for you and
your project. 18. The nature of research means that things
will not always go according to plan. This does not mean you are a bad
student. Keep calm, take a break and then carry on. Experiments that
fail can still be written up as part of a successful PhD. 19.
Never struggle on your own. Talk to other students and have frank
discussions with your supervisor. There’s no shame in asking for help.
You are not alone. 20. Enjoy your PhD! It can be tough, and
there will be days when you wish you had a ‘normal’ job, but PhDs are
full of wonderful experiences and give you the opportunity to work on
something that fascinates you. Celebrate your successes and enjoy
yourself.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-07332-x
This is an article from the Nature Careers
Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional
experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged. You can get in touch
with the editor at naturecareerseditor@nature.com.
Authors can share their article at any stage of publication - ways in which they are able to do this are detailed below.
Authors can share any version of your article with individual
colleagues and students if you are asked for a copy, as part of teaching
and training at your institution (excluding open online sharing), and
as part of a grant application, thesis submission, or doctorate.
Extend the reach and visibility of your research by creating a video abstract or video byte. For a fee, Wiley—in partnership with Research Square—offers
you the opportunity to outline the key findings of your published
article in a dynamic video. Through this multimedia content, colleagues,
funders and anyone else interested in your work can experience your
research anytime, anywhere.
What are video abstracts and video bytes?
Video Byte
Video Abstract
A 1-minute overview of your work and how it impacts society, geared towards a lay audience.
A 2-3 minute animation briefly explaining your methods and findings
and the contribution of your research to the field, geared toward a
broad, scientifically literate audience.
A video abstract is a 2-3 minute, professionally animated and
narrated synopsis that briefly explains your methods and findings and
the contribution of your research to the field. Video abstracts are
geared toward a broad, scientifically literate audience.
A video byte is a 1-minute overview of your work and how it impacts society, geared towards a lay audience.
How do I order a video abstract or video byte?
You can order your video abstract or video byte directly from Research Square,
or you can log in to your Author Services account and click on the
"Make Video Abstract" button which is present for participating
journals.
Who creates my video abstract or video byte?
Research Square. They are an organisation composed of writers,
voice-over artists, illustrators, and animators with graduate-level
scientific training from top US research universities. Your article is
matched with a scientific writer who will read your manuscript and write
a short script describing your discovery and
why it is important. You will be asked to provide feedback and final
approval on the script for your video, ensuring that you’re involved
with production from beginning to end.
How much does it cost?
The price of a video abstract is $1,500 USD. A video byte is $300
USD. Please keep in mind that additional script and video revisions may
result in additional costs.
How can I further promote my video?
Wiley provides you with 7 promotional tools to help ensure your work gets seen, read, and cited!
For more information, please visit our Promotional Toolkit page.
What will my video abstract or video byte be used for?
You are welcome to share your video abstract or video byte with your
institution, at conferences, on your group’s website, via social media,
etc. In addition, Research Square will post your video on their social
media channels, and Wiley may also do so. For journals enrolled in the
video abstracts program, videos will be posted in the journal's Video
Abstract Gallery on Wiley Online Library.
No matter how great the research in your journal is, it will only
have impact if researchers, librarians and the general public find it.
So how will your audience discover your journal?
Wiley works hard to increase the visibility of your journal and support authors in promoting their research. But here are a few things you can do to maximize your journals' discoverability.
Consider collating themed content into a virtual issue in order to generate new readership from specific areas, or showcase content aligned to a particular event
Early
career researchers (ECRs) are well aware academia is a competitive
field. These days, ECRs face many challenges as they look to build their
publication record, reputations and careers. It may be uncomfortable at
first, but learning how to self-promote can help you build your brand
and open up a new world of opportunities – even ones outside academia.
So what can you do to make you and your work more visible? Read on to learn how to take those first steps.
Step 1: Self-assess (Prep time: 1 hour +)
You are a brand and when building your brand, there are two essential points to remember: be authentic and be consistent.
First, consider your natural style. Don’t try to be overly friendly
if you are reserved, too cool if you are eccentric. Play to your
strengths.
Second, brainstorm why you want to improve your brand. Is it to
improve your reputation generally? To receive invitations to give
keynotes? In order to be sought after for consulting opportunities?
Third, think about the future. How would you describe your work now
and what are your future interests? Is there anything you don’t do
currently but want to do?
Taking the time to think through these points will help you
understand the tone you want to set and the image you want to project.
It may be useful to organize your points into handy notes for referring
to later – it will make it easier to stay true to your goals.
Step 2: Write your story (Prep time: 1 hour +)
No one knows you better than yourself. The challenge is to distill
how you want to present yourself into short biographies. It will help to
have the following:
1. A short bio (1-2 lines)
2. A longer bio (1-3 paragraphs)
Short bios can be used on social media sites such as Twitter. Here is an example: Andrew Jones @AndyBeetroot Professor of Applied Physiology & Associate Dean, Exeter
University. Exercise physiology, sport science, nutrition, training,
performance, Gary Numan.
Longer bios can be used on LinkedIn, personal websites, conference programmes, when signing off on an article and more. See an example from Andy Miah.
You want people to find you by directly searching your name yes, but
also by topical searching, so don’t forget keywords and/or hashtags.
Step 3: Take your best shot (Prep time: 30 minutes +)
If you want to build a recognizable brand, it will help to have a
recognizable image. When starting out, all you need is one good
headshot. Whether you recruit a friend with a DSLR or a family member
with a camera phone to take your photo, remember to be aware of your
background. Why not try choosing one with some detail, rather than a
plain background? A university campus courtyard or interesting building
could be good options.
Step 4: Build your web presence (Prep time: 1 hour ++)
Now that you have determined your vision for your brand, crafted your
bios and taken your perfect headshot, it’s time to get your brand out
there. There are many avenues to choose from, and don’t feel pressured
to take them all on. Starting with a simple LinkedIn account can be a
good first step – it’s simple to set-up, low maintenance, and useful
(not all university webpages are easy to navigate!). It’s basically an
easy way to share your CV, ideas, and updates on what you are doing or
opportunities you are looking for, while allowing you to connect and
engage with peers who are doing the same.
Other popular avenues include Twitter and blogs – click on the links for some ideas on where to begin.
Should you want to carve out a more defined space on the internet, consider having your own website. Jon Quah has a personal site to highlight his consulting work, while John Delury uses his to showcase previous publications, and media publications and appearances.
Step 5: Engage the media (Prep time: to be determined)
The fact is there is a lot of published research out there – over 50
million journal articles with that number expected to double every 20
years. If you think your research would be of interest to a wider
audience, consider pitching to the media. Many are interested in stories
from scholars.
While it can be difficult shifting from academic writing to a
journalistic style, the results can be worth it. Take the example of Kim
Yi Dionne, an Assistant Professor of Government at Smith College, as mentioned in The Guardian. A blog post she wrote for the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage
blog went viral and resulted in academic opportunities such as a
journal article, book chapter, and (indirectly) a National Science
Foundation grant.
If this interests you, keep in mind that there are many different
ways to accomplish this. The style and tone can vary depending on your
publication outlet of choice. There’s a wealth of information online so
you may need to do your own research to determine your approach, but the
extra effort can be worth it. Take control of your brand and who knows
where the opportunities may lead – you may just become the ‘go to’ person in your field. Jennifer Lien is the Managing Editor for Taylor & Francis’
Social Sciences and Humanities journals in Asia Pacific. She is also the
co-author of the business book Asia’s Entrepreneurs: Dilemmas, Risks
and Opportunities (Routledge). Follow her on Twitter @lienje.
On this page you will find a comparison chart of available research profile websites
You might try one or more of these:
Create a Google (Scholar) account and activate Google Scholar Citations
Create an ORCID account
Create a ResearcherID
Check your Scopus Author ID
Create a ResearchGate acoount
Create an Academia.edu account
Create a Mendeley account
Login to your UU-profile and make it richer
</>
Hands on workshop
On request the library organises hands on workshops for UU research groups and graduate schools. Interested? Get into contact.
</>
Actions to enhance your visibility
There are many things you can do to enhance the visibility of your research:
Analyse who is using your research and through which channels
Avoid journals that are not well-indexed
Create an ORCID
Blog and tweet selectively on your research topics
Deposit your publications in the university repository
Produce a short video pitch on your main research topic
Publish Open Access
Share an early version of your paper as pre-print (ArXiv, bioRxiv, preprints.org, Cognet, RepEc, SSRN, PeerJ Preprints etc.)
Share your data (FigShare, Dutch Dataverse network etc.)
Upload full text of your papers to your researcher profiles or your own website
Use a stable and full author name and affiliation
Use research profiles to unambiguously link publications to you
</>
Why should I care about my online presence?
To make your research and teaching activities known
To increase the chance of publications getting cited
To correct attribution, names and affiliations
To make sure that a much as possible is counted in research assessments
To increase the chance of new contacts for research cooperation
To increase the chance of funding
To serve society better
</>
Researcher profile sites & services compared
There are various types of sites and services that are important in fostering your visibility:
Author disambiguation services: ORCID and ResearcherID
(and also DAI/NARCIS, VIAF and ISNI that are managed by libraries and
registration agencies and require no user action from academics)
Personal sites and social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, own website, blog
Researcher Communities: Academia / ResearchGate
Reference managrment tools with social functions: Mendeley
Search engines with author profiles: Google Scholar, Scopus
More visible with Google Scholar Citations in three steps
Whether
you like it or not, Google Scholar is by far the most widely used
bibliographical tool for scholarly publications. It has a problem
however, and that is metadata control. You can enhance your findability
by creating an account and telling Google which publications in their
database are yours. After taking these steps searches on your name will
show your profile on top of the results. The profile itself shows your
list of publications in Google Scholar with basic metrics. Besides
journal papers, it may also include books and reports.
If you do not yet have a Google account, go to Google and create it.
Go to Google Scholar, make sure you are logged in and click "My Citations"
Follow instructions to create your profile and add or remove publications that are yours or not yours
Once you have activated your profile, Google Scholar gives you
automatically reading suggestions based on your citations (on the
homepage and a full list by clicking "my updates")
You can track new papers and citations (of yourself and/or others)
NB Because new articles are automatically added to authors' profiles
it is wise to check regularly, because in rare cases articles may be
wrongly attributed to you.
</>
More visible with ORCID in three steps
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is
a non-proprietary, international ID that provides you with a persistent
digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher.
It is strategically important because it enables all databases to
automatically link publications to you by your ORCID. At ORCID you can
create a profile, link it to your Scopus ID, ResearchID and/or import
publications from a so-called crossref search. Further functionality is
being developed.
Go to ORCID, register for an ORCID ID (under "for researchers") and complete your profile
Click "import research activities" and follow instructions to import publication details from e.g. Scopus
Click "view public ORCID record" to check whether it does not show anything you do not like to be publicly visible
ResearcherID
is the profile tool from Thomson Reuters, the owners of Web of Science
and the Journal Citation Reports. Researcher ID offers a public profile.
You can choose what to show publicly. Researcher ID is also important
as a basis to provide feedback to Web of Science for grouping author
name variants or corrections to affiliations.
Add some publications if you have a few listed in Web of Science and preview the public version of your profile.
If you already have made an ORCID ID you can link Researcher ID to
that. It is best to do that in a place where you have access to Web of
Science.
</>
More visible by checking your Scopus Author ID in three steps
The
Scopus Author ID is not a researcher profile site, but helps author
recognition and disambiguation when searching publications. Many
researchers already have a Scopus ID without realising it. By checking
the correctness of publications assigned to your Scopus Author ID, you
will certainly help others finding your stuff. It will also improve
completeness and correctness of citation analyses. And it also improves
feeds of your publications list to be shown on other sites.
Go to Scopus and use the author search tab to search for your own name
Check if all publications assigned to you are correct and if there
are no variants of your name that are not yet grouped to your main
entry.
If there are ungrouped name variants with your publications send
Scopus feedback by checking name variants and clicking "request to merge
authors" on top of the results list. (For that it may be required to
create a personal account within the institutional license).
If you want to get an idea of the problem of author disambiguation have a look at this search for H. Wang
ResearchGate
is a very large (originally German) researcher community linking
researchers around topics. It is frequently used to ask questions to
collegues all over the world that have the same set of interests and
specialisations. You can choose which topics or researchers to follow.
You can automatically populate your publications list or add items from
reference management tools or add manually. You can even upload and
share full text publications (e.g. last author versions that many
publishers allow you to share).
Go to Researchgate, sign up and complete your profile with whatever you think relevant.
Add your publications by clicking add publications" and choosing "author match".
Researchgate also boosts metrics for individuals and institutions: RG-score
(total activity and weighed interaction, plus publications) and impact
points (number of publications weighed by journals they are published
in).
Academia.edu
is a large researcher community. Just as ResearchGate it connects
scholars around topics. You can add papers through a built in search
using Microsoft Academic, PubMed and ArXiv. You can also add ful text.
The process is easy, but the coverage not as comprehensive as Google
Scholar.
One
of the steps towards visibility and efficient reference management is a
Mendeley account. Mendeley is an Elsevier-owned reference management
tool that is used by millions of researchers, offers immediate
readership statistics and has strong social functions. Probably many of
your publications are already present in the Mendeley database, but with
your own account you can make sure that all of them are. And you can do
much, much more.
Mendeley, make an account.
Complete your profile
Add publications:
(PDF-)files of (your) papers on your hard drive (in one go)
references from a search in Google Scholar or another bibliographic database
Start building a network of colleagues or (open or closed) groups
Of course, for the reference management function of Mendeley there
are many alternatives, such as Zotero, Endnote, RefWorks and more. See
the seperate guide on reference management.
</>
More visible with the Utrecht University profile pages in three steps
The Utrecht Unviversity staff profile pages are
available since Spring 2013. You can add your CV, profile and list
additional functions (free text). It also lists your publications as
entered in the University Research Information System Metis. Often this
is done for you by the faculty or department administration once every
3, 6 or 12 months. However, one thing you can do yourself is upload the
full text of publications to make these more visible.
1) Go to your UU profile page
and start editing by logging in top right. Add some text on tthe CV
tab. Even just listing one or two current research projects, areas of
expertise or subject keywords will help foster your visibility
2) Have a look at your contact information tab. Add links to your
other profiles (Linked-In, Google Scholar, ORCID, Academia and others
you may have). You can also choose to adds these links to the profile
tab.
3) Have a look at your publication list. Are there titles of which
you have the full text available to upload? It does help to do this. You
can do this via your PURE account. Your publications will become
available in the Utrecht University repository and by that will become
easily findable with free full text in Google Scholar. That means they
are available to scholars, professionals and lay people, even if they do
not have access to the expensive journal plaforms. Yes, there are
sometime copyright issues, but the good thing is: the library always
does a final copyright check. In some cases you are not allowed to
upload the publisher version of papers, but are allowed to upload your
last author version (after peer review but without the publisher's
typesetting etc.)
Early
career researchers (ECRs) are well aware academia is a competitive
field. These days, ECRs face many challenges as they look to build their
publication record, reputations and careers. It may be uncomfortable at
first, but learning how to self-promote can help you build your brand
and open up a new world of opportunities – even ones outside academia.
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is
a non-proprietary, international ID that provides you with a persistent
digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher.
It is strategically important because it enables all databases to
automatically link publications to you by your ORCID. At ORCID you can
create a profile, link it to your Scopus ID, ResearchID and/or import
publications from a so-called crossref search. Further functionality is
being developed.
