Name recognition and a reputation as an expert in the field are vital for a researcher, especially one looking to expand their reach using publishing work and speaking at conferences. To do that, you will need to showcase the impactfulness of your work in the field. There are a number of reasons why researchers build a research profile, such as building up their CV, expanding their network, or discovering new research opportunities.
Before you begin the process of building your research profile, you will need to understand the context of the field you work in, look into what is currently happening in your research field, and consider the context of research in your broader career in terms of what you want to achieve now and in the future (Shinton Consulting, 2013). It is worthwhile to take a look at the research profiles of researchers in your field and note the general organization of their profiles. Take a look at the work they choose to highlight and check if you have researched in that area as it may be a particularly important area in your field. Once you have gone through some research profiles, you are ready to begin building your own.
Ways to Expand Your Research Profile
Perhaps the main way to expand your research profile is to make sure to publish strategically by publishing in the right journals and including relevant keywords and highlighting them in your research. Choosing journals that are relevant to your field and are of high quality will increase the impact of your work and result in more people finding your research. It is expected that you will target a number of different journals in various points of your career as you pursue a multitude of research opportunities within your field. To further expand your reach, you should consider including keywords in your publications, since that is what fellow researchers are looking for when considering their own research (University of Birmingham, n.d.). To find the right journal, you can use eContent Pro’s Journal Finder tool to ensure that you maximize your work’s impact and visibility.
To measure your work's visibility, you should monitor and understand research indicators such as citations (University of Birmingham, n.d.). This is because citations are seen as performance indicators for researchers and are generally assumed to reflect the impact of the research and its quality as measured by its visibility (Aksnes et al., 2019). While you work on expanding your research profile, it might be worthwhile to look into bibliometrics, which, although initially used to enable researchers to find relevant articles, are now used to inform researchers and publishers of their own work’s impact and reach based on the citations mentioning that publication.
Keeping up with the latest developments in the research world is paramount to ensuring positive feedback based on your research indicators, meaning higher visibility and impact. Many institutions and organizations have databases that bring together the work of researchers from different disciplines and encourage collaboration. With researchers and their work and projects gathered in one spot, it is easier to see the impact of an institution as a whole and of individual researchers. Many such databases will automatically create a CV that updates as you include new activities and publications, which will be a valuable source of information about you and your work to give out. If your institution or organization has such a platform, make sure that it is fully up to date with your latest work. Also, with many publishers using open access, including your work in an institutional repository and self-archiving as much of it as possible will lead to you having the widest possible exposure. Most publishing policies will allow you to archive some version of your work in a repository, although it is recommended that you check with your personal publishing company first. Ensure that as much of your past work is available online as well, as this will improve its discoverability and enable it to be found and eventually cited. Studies show that this results in an increase in publication citation that ranges from 20% to 500% (University of Birmingham, n.d.).
As you might expect, being active on social media is vital to ensuring a standout research profile. You can use social media to spread your ideas and findings to like-minded researchers and interact with them to reach their audience. This can be done in a number of ways including writing blogs and using tags with keywords that will be relevant to your field and the audience you hope to reach. By using keywords, you are maximizing the number of people finding your work by organic searches on the web. By using tags, people can easily find your tweets, and this will allow you to expand your network of followers. Most social media sites prove a layman’s analysis for your reach and trends in your social media account. Checking those analytics and seeing what works best for your network and seeing if you’re reaching the audience you’re hoping to will help you make changes in real time. There are also other social media aspects catering towards academics specifically, such as Academia.edu and LinkedIn, that will allow you to follow other people in your field. You can also create your own webpage, where you can include publication lists and your activities. If you are new to the social media arena, do not hesitate to add work retrospectively and highlight work you have done in the past. While having a presence is important, you can better your chances of finding your audience if you participate in promoting your work with others, debating with your followers, or finding other ways to engage with your network (University of Birmingham, n.d.).
There are things that many researchers may not consider that can play a part in increasing your impact and visibility. One important example of an often-overlooked strategy for increasing your work’s audience ismanaging your research data. Consider your file naming strategies to ensure easy identification of the content of the file without opening the file, such as naming your files by chronological order based on the date of publication. Also, as college students hear many times a semester, you should back up your data and make multiple copies in different places. You could also automate this process in some cases, and this will help in the long run, as it helps mitigate against data loss due to accidents. You might also want to complete a data management plan (DMP) to help consolidate your requirements and put processes in place to ensure that your data is protected and is preserved for future use. This is sometimes required by your research funder. You can use an online DMP tool to write and edit your management plan. Another way to increase your visibility is by describing your data using metadata, which can be generated automatically in some systems, to effectively help other users find your data. This will, in turn, result in people finding your data more often, using it, and citing it. A recommended method of reaching a broader audience is increasing the usability of your data by giving the appropriate context, description of items, methodology and methods, and definitions of jargon and acronyms (University of Birmingham, n.d.).
As publishing is an important pillar of building a standout research profile, it is paramount to make use of available author services, many of which are available on the eContent Pro website. Services such as English Language Copyediting, Scientific and Scholarly Copyediting, Journal Selection, and many other related services will greatly improve your chances of getting your manuscript accepted into a journal. You will find eContent Pro’s author services to be top quality, turned around exceptionally fast, and affordably priced. Here are what our satisfied customers are saying about eContent Pro Author Services:
“I was very impressed with the eContent Pro Copy-Editing Service. Our work was reviewed within two business days, much faster than I expected. The markups were clear and consistent across the document: our editor did a great job correcting style manual issues, as well as syntax issues, without disrupting our intent.”– Prof. Jennifer Barker, University of Memphis, USA“Without this service there is a possibility that my work may not have been accepted for publication.” – Dr. Jane Dorrian, Open University, UKREFERENCES
- Aksnes, D., Langfeldt, L., & Wouters, P. (2019). Citations, citation indicators, and research quality: An overview of basic concepts and theories. SAGE Journals. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244019829575
- Shinton Consulting. (2013). Guide to building a research profile. Sussex Researcher Careers. https://sussexresearchercareers.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/guide-to-building-a-research-profile.pdf
- University of Birmingham. (n.d.).Five ways to raise your research profile. University of Birmingham. https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/as/libraryservices/library/research/5-ways-improve-research-impact.aspx
