You may wish to enhance your research profile by joining an online academic network.
Academic networking sites can be used to:
However:
The tabs above provide more information about some specific academic networks.
www.academia.eduA platform for academics to share research papers.
Email discussion lists for education and research communities in the UK and worldwide.
A tool to help scientists to make connections worldwide.
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences online is an international interdisciplinary organisation of scholars and teachers.
www.mendeley.comFree reference manager and academic social network.
An online network for the community of researchers, from students to professors, engaged in research methods.
Using Google Scholar you can create a public research profile, so that if people search for your name they can link to all of your publications easily.
You can see who is citing your work, and track citations over time.
Visit the Google Scholar citations page for more information. You will need a Google account to use this service.
Using social media tools effectively can raise your profile and extend the reach of your research.
"Most of my papers, before I blogged and tweeted them, had one to two downloads, even if they had been in the repository for months...Upon blogging and tweeting, within 24 hours, there were on average 70 downloads of my papers. Seventy."
- Terras, Melissa. " The Impact of Social Media on the Dissemination of Research: Results of an Experiment"
See the following tabs for an introduction to some of the main social media tools. The Research Information Network provides a social media guide for researchers with a more in depth list of available options.
Researcher Development offers training courses to postgraduate researchers, including 'Sharing your research'.
Blogs are a popular method of disseminating timely information and facilitating discussion.
Many blogs allow you to use RSS feeds so that new content is automatically delivered to you.
You can set up your own blog using software such as TypePad or WordPress.
The University offers support for postgraduates and staff who wish to use blogs and wikis to aid their research.
Twitter is a microblogging platform, limited to 280 characters per tweet.
You can use Twitter to:
To help you, here are some academic tweeting tips.
LinkedIn originated as a business oriented site, but it can be useful in academia to build up a network of connections.
It is a professional networking site where you can join groups and share your work. You can also have specific skills endorsed by colleagues, and write them recommendations.
Journal Impact Factors are the measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year.
They can be used to:
However, critics argue that they are a crude numeric metric. Caution should be exercised in comparing journals across disciplines.
See the Journal Impact Factors Libguide for more information.
Dimensions Plus is a modern and innovative, linked research data infrastructure and tool, reimagining discovery and access to research: grants, publications, citations, clinical trials, patents and policy documents in one place. The Guide to the Dimensions Data Approach provides an overview of the Dimensions database content
For comprehensive information and support, use the Dimensions support site.
Open access (OA) is the free, immediate, online availability of research publications, together with rights to use them subject to proper attribution.
The use and re-use rights are generally conveyed by the application of a Creative Commons Licence (usually CC-BY). Generally, a user must be able to do the following, free of publisher- imposed charges:
Traditionally, academic research sat behind expensive paywalls. Researchers could access publications only via personal or institutional subscriptions, or by paying for individual articles.
The OA movement is now growing internationally, with the recognition that publicly-funded research should be freely available. In the UK, OA gained momentum through support from policy makers and research funders, in particular HEFCE, RCUK and the Wellcome Trust.
In terms of enhancing your research profile, open access:
In terms of the wider benefits, open access:
Here are some ideas to consider when thinking about the dissemination of your research:
|
Traditionally |
Now |
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The responsibility for disseminating your work rested with the publisher |
Effective dissemination of your work is in your hands
|
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The printed article was the format of record |
Increasingly the digital article is the format of record |
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Other scholars had time to search out what you wanted them to know
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Unless you routinely publish in high-impact, prestigious journals, it is up to you to make your research widely available |
[Concepts derived from: Swan, Alma. Open Access and you: a relationship with promise (2012). http://hdl.handle.net/10036/4004]
If you have been recommended for award by your Board of Examiners, you must submit a copy of your thesis/dissertation to ORE, the University's institutional repository, before your degree can be formally approved.
Please read the information on the Postgraduate Administration webpages before submitting your thesis to ORE.
Note that it is possible to request that an embargo is placed on your thesis if:
You will need to liaise with the Postgraduate Administration office for any queries relating to the submission/graduation
process: pgadmin@exeter.ac.uk.
There are two ways to make your work open access, of equal scholarly value:
Green: deposit a copy of your paper in an institutional or subject repository. This also referred to as self-archiving, and is usually the final copy of the peer-reviewed publication (known as the accepted author manuscript). NOTE: some publishers allow deposition of the published version.
Gold: pay the journal publisher an article processing charge (APC) to provide free and unrestricted access to the final published version, immediately on publication.
You can find out more in our open access webpages.
For the University:
University policy is that all researchers, including postgraduates, should deposit in ORE the research papers they produce while at the University.
You can find out more in our open access webpages.