Library guides / Biblioteekgidse: Research Process: Increase your online research visibility

Increase your online research visibility

Good reasons to be connected as a digital academic:

Gaining a collegial network that may not have been accessible to you otherwise
Ideal showcase for your work
Discuss your research passions with those who are interested in the same topics
Potential non-academic partners and organisations can find you and learn about your work
Opportunities for media interviews (online, TV, radio, print)
Higher citations and potential impact for your research
Invitations to speak / keynotes / visits
Collaborative research projects with colleagues
Job offers
Immediate research network for peer support and mentoring
External approaches from industry partners

Resource: "Grow With Us" La Trobe Graduate Research School

Do a Google search on your name

If you have a relatively common name, try including a discipline, or institutional affiliation to narrow down the search results.

Consider then the following:

How close to the top of the search results do you appear?

Do other people with the same name as you appear in the search results?
Is your work reflected in the way you wish? Can you see presentations you’ve given, articles you’ve written or projects you’ve been involved in?
Is your institutional profile visible and up-to-date?
Can you find your social media profiles – personal and/or professional?
Do you see anything that others are saying about you? For example has your work been referenced elsewhere, referred to on other blogs or included in any media coverage?
Select the images tab in the search engine. Have any personal photos made it into the results for your name? Do you mind?

Decide how you would like to improve on your online presence

The following tabs to the right will show you examples of how to improve your visibility with profiles and other networking tools.

Sources:

"Grow With Us" La Trobe Graduate Research School

Digital identity health check for academics

ORCID - Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier

A single author iD to unify your publications and connect with different research systems. The use of ORCID is mandated by the NRF. Stellenbosch University has an integration with ORCID. Please see the Library Guide on ORCID to read more and to connect your SU identity with ORCID. You can create your ID and link it to your SU identity at the same time, by following the link above.

Google Scholar profile

It will give you a unified list of publications available on Google Scholar. You need to activate/create your profile yourself. Please remember to make your profile public.

Researcher ID

ResearcherID is now integrated with Publons. You need to register an account yourself.

Scopus Author ID

This ID will be automatically added when you publish in a journal indexed by Scopus. Just make sure that you don't have different profiles under different name variants. If you do, please request Scopus to merge them.

It is important to deposit your research output to repostitories (institutional, subject specific) and make it openly available. It is often required by funders. At Stellenbosch University you may deposit to the SU institutional repository (SUNScholar) and the SU institutional research data repository (SUNScholarData).