Some tips for promoting your research online and tracking how it’s doing

Logos of three different tools: Figshare, Almetric, and The Conversation

After doing the research and getting your outputs published, it can feel like the dissemination will surely take care of itself – you can tweet it, make it open access on Pure (if the publisher allows) and let your networks do the rest right? This works to an extent, but there are some great tools out there to push it even further.

Figshare

Set up in 2019, Edge Hill Figshare is a home for any research materials worth sharing that don’t have a home elsewhere such as datasets, figures, conference presentations, or posters. These can be added to Pure in some cases, but Figshare visualises them an brings them to life. For example, by sharing a poster in Figshare like this PhD student has done, you can connect it to a global community, give it a DOI, and track any views, downloads, or altmetrics activity. This exposure also provides an opportunity direct traffic back to your research outputs. To get started, just go to the site, log in and share something. Learning Services can provide, help, advice, or training sessions.

Altmetrics

Altmetrics track research impact via social media channels, websites, policy documents, blogs, Wikipedia, etc. They demonstrate impact far quicker than citations, and can track engagement beyond academia. For example, one 2019 study about how the human gaze can deter seagulls swooping to take food like chips received global exposure across news media, and this is reflected in the altmetric count, but in academica it has yet to accrue many citations.

An altmetric figure (sometimes called a 'donut') showing the figure 2249.
An Altmetric ‘donut’ showing the score received by the paper ‘Herring gulls respond to human gaze direction’. The different colours represent different sources of impact.

Workshop: ‘Promoting Research Using Social Media’

On 25 March 2020, Dr Costas Gabrielatos from English, History and Creative Writing is running this workshop. It discusses the combined use of academic networking websites (e.g. Research Gate, Academia) and social media to make reseach visible and accessible. All staff and research students are welcome – either book via MyView or email [email protected].

‘Maximizing dissemination and engaging readers: The other 50% of an author’s day: A case study’

This paper has some great tips for disseminating research across and beyond our regular bubbles echo chambers. This includes harnessing the power of influencers and taking the opportunity of conference hashtags.

The Conversation

the image shows a man walking in London. He is dressed in Union Jack clothing, which covers the top half of his body. Big Ben can be seen in the background.
A recent article in The Conversation published by an Edge Hill academic

Definitely worth trying, this platform enables researchers to work with journalists to present their research for broader audiences and reach new readers. The company is coming on campus in February and March and you can book a one-to-one with one of their highly expereinced editors.