Building research visibility for career progression and successful grant applications
Building research visibility for career progression and successful grant applications
Research visibility is about making one’s research visible to academics, scholars, policymakers and people who need access to the research results, e.g. industry and other stakeholders. It usually has two components: to be known in a particular field related to your work and to gain connections with other researchers. The latter is essential for early-career researchers, since they can benefit from connections that can increase the chances of their research being noticed, used and having an impact, thus growing their reputation and chances of success, including as regards to securing grants — both within and outside academia.
How can you increase your research visibility?
- Create a researcher identity and publicise it
Researchers should make use of author platforms such as ResearcherID, Scopus Author ID, Publons (Web of Science) and ORCiD. ORCiD is particularly important when starting a research career. It should be used strategically to connect one's research results and boost one's online visibility. It should be used every time you share your work, for example, when submitting a manuscript or publishing a data set. In addition, the ORCiD should be listed on your personal website and social media platforms. This will connect you to your research outputs across the internet, regardless of the search tool used.
- Carve out your research niche (research interest)
Identifying unique and novel topics within your field that generate a significant interest level might help attract future partners, increasing visibility and impact.
- Publish in journals with an impact factor and indexed in major databases
The most popular method of gaining visibility is through publishing papers in journals with high impact factors and/or Scopus citations.
- Attend national and international conferences
Speaking in front of an audience at a conference not only enhances the confidence of the researcher, but it also helps them portray themselves as subject matter expert and scholar in their particular field. Participating in such events also allows for networking and the formation of new collaborations that will eventually help increase a researcher’s visibility.
- Use constant name and photo.
Maintaining consistency in name format and photo is important to ensure that all your publications will be credited to you. This also applies to maintaining the standard name of an affiliated institution throughout one's career, by identifying all research results with the standard institutional affiliation.
- Collaborate with researchers
Think about your collaborations. International collaborations, and also bringing colleagues on board, can be especially beneficial. According to multiple studies, papers with more than one author gain more visibility and more citations.
- Engage in scientific discussions
Active participation in research networking forums is another excellent strategy to promote your research and increase your visibility. This will enable you to create profiles, promote your research findings, identify groups of interest and participate in discussions occurring within your network by asking and responding to questions. Such discussions will also inform you of the impact of your activity on social networks, such as teh numbers of downloads of your papers, views of your profile and levels of activity in comparison to everyone else within the network.
- Maintain an active professional membership
Active professional membership enables networking opportunities through various platforms and knowledge sharing. It allows a researcher to participate in one's professional body's peer-led discussions, which can lead to opportunities to submit papers as part of a special issue of a journal or conference symposium in your field of study. It is also an opportunity to meet other scholars and explore prospects of possible collaborations.
The impact of one's research utimaltey depends on the number of citations and funding. Higher impact could help researchers obtain an academic promotion or tenure. Selecting open access for published articles can help increase citations rather than restricted access. An impactful way of increasing citations is by sharing the researcher’s published articles through scholarly sites like Academia.edu, Mendeley, ResearchGate, etc. and social media sites like LinkedIn. This helps researchers connect with other researchers. Having online profiles will also allow other researchers to view articles of interest that may have been published in cognate areas. Online profiles must be easily accessible, and linking articles to the researcher’s profile help increase their visibility. Getting an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCiD) will help them be identified through a unique ID number, allowing others to easily view the researcher’s output. Another site, Google Scholar, returns a list of articles, books and other documents by the author and displays citation metrics, indicating the researcher’s impact. In addition, Google Scholar provides citation alerts to researchers with registered accounts, but such notifications must be set up. Widening publications across various scholarly sites, including YouTube or blogs, can assist in boosting a researcher's visibility.
In recent years, methods used to evaluate the output and impact of research have evolved. Altmetrics have also gained popularity in the context of calculating the researcher's impact. It recognises that research output comes in many forms, including videos, software, physical output, websites and social media. Altmetrics uses intelligence-based techniques to track the performance and activities of non-traditional research outputs and traditional research publications. This provides a data-driven, comprehensive evaluation of a researcher's contributions and activities within a particular field and engagement with a particular piece of research.
Dr Helen Onyeaka is an industrial microbiologist with over 25 years of experience. She has published more than 75 journal articles and garnered more than 1000 citations. Helen is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Birmingham, where she lectures and supervises MSc and PhD projects.