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

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.

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 research@edgehill.ac.uk.

‘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

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.

From our Collections and Archives Team

If there is a book, chapter, or journal article that you want to read but can’t find through our library holdings, ‘You Want It, We Get It’ is the service to go to!

The combined service provides a one-stop-shop for all your access requests. Simply fill out the request form with as much detail as you have, and we’ll do the rest.

We’ll contact you once a route to access has been established, whether that be Inter Library Loan, a purchase on your behalf or on the rare occasion where we can’t get it.

You can find the request forms and further information on using our services here: https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/ls/library/ and by clicking on the ‘You want it, We get it’ tab.

Using Altmetric data, we can get a picture of the most-mentioned research from Edge Hill in terms of news media, policy, bloggers, social media and more. Here are the top results, broken down by faculty.

Altmetric is a company which provides an ‘attention score’ for research, measuring the number of times an article, book chapter, conference paper, etc is mentioned in government policy, on Twitter, in the news, or even in Wikipedia articles. In calculating the score, some sources have greater weighting than others – news mentions score higher than tweet for example. The score is visualised using a spiral, sometimes called an Altmetric ‘donut’:

In the above example, the Altmetric donut is blue and red – the blue part represents the number of tweets, and the larger red area represents news media.

In this excercise, the top 50 Altmetric scores for Edge Hill University research from November 2018 – December 2019 were recorded. The top three scoring research outputs for each faculty are presented below.

Faculty of Education

Research by Tim Cain, Karen Boardman and Annabel Yale received the highest scores. The primary source of attention for the research was via Twitter users, so the Altmetric ‘donuts’ display a blue colour. Professor Cain’s article benefitted from being free-to-read for a short period of time, which many education professionals sharing the access link.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Research by Linda Kaye, Gray Atherton & Liam Cross and Andy Sparks received the highest scores. Dr Kaye’s research benefitted from broad news outlet coverage – it was mentioned by The Telegraph, Yahoo, and many others and generated headlines such as ‘Spending a Lot of Time on WhatsApp May Actually Make You Feel Less Lonely And Boost Your Self Esteem‘. The next highest scoring research was ‘The Animal in Me…’ which received most of its attention via Twitter (193 tweets) and like the paper by Dr Sparks, is open access.

Faculty of Health, Social Care and Medicine

Scoring 67, the article by Professor Lucy Bray, Victoria Appleton and Ashley Sharpe was followed by papers by Richard Williams and Emma Jayne Pearson et al. ‘The information needs of children’ was featured in ‘The Medical News’, which focused on the study’s use of the Xploro app with children to reduce anxiety about hospital procedures. All three articles here were published open access and benefitted from attention via Twitter.

Contact

If you would like to know more about altmetrics, please contact Liam Bullingham, Research Support Librarian: liam.bullingham@edgehill.ac.uk.

We have a trial to Sage Research Methods, a resource to answer all your research methods questions until 13 February 2020.

Sage Research Methods is an online platform with ebooks, videos, and tools that provide authoritative information on how to perform hundreds of research methods. The material is perfect for academic work, and is definitely worth using in your bibliography!

Use the Methods Map to learn about the features of a particular research methods and link through to relevant ebooks and videos:

Access over 1000 searchable ebooks to give an edge to your work such as ‘Corrupt Research’:

There are over 125 hours of videos, including tutorials and expert videos. Each video includes a trascript which auto-scrolls, allowing you to follow it through playback.

The trial lasts until 13 February, but if you want us to keep Sage Research Methods let us know! Please email eresources@edgehill.ac.uk and tell us how you feel.

You can access Sage Research Methods here: https://edgehill.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://methods.sagepub.com

You may notice that the H-index in your Pure profile shows a different number to the one on Google Scholar. Here we explain why…

What is the h-index?

The H-index is a measure to show a researcher’s productivity and impact. Although convenient as an assessment tool, it has received valid criticism because it favours older, male academics and assumes ‘citations = impact’, when it has been shown that the practice can be manipulated.

As an academic at Edge Hill University, your Pure profile will display your H-index by default (see above image). This though, can show a different number to the H-index displayed in a Google Scholar profile. Here is the same author’s h-index in Google Scholar:

This shows the total h-index to be 49, so 13 points higher than the number quoted in Pure.

Why the difference?

The reason for the difference is that the figure in Pure is taken from Scopus, not Google Scholar. H-index numbers are lower in Scopus compared with Scholar because there is less content – Scopus has around 43 million items, whereas Scholar has been estimated to include around 300 million – far more than any other database. This doesn’t make Scopus an inferior source, it indexes high quality journals admitted on the basis of merit, whereas Scholar uses a powerful algorithm to pull in anything it can find on the web that ‘looks’ academic. This includes dissertations, theses, and some poor or even so-called ‘predatory’ journals.

Why use the number from Scopus?

On a practical basis, Scopus is used because both it and Pure are Elsevier products, and as such can exchange data. Google Scholar however, does not share such data with other platforms.

What should I do?

If you don’t want to display your Scopus h-index, you edit the setting and do this. Go to: edit profile > Portal Profile > untick the box.

For more information please contact Liam Bullingham, Research Support Librarian: liam.bullingham@edgehill.ac.uk

Normally, to publish an article with a major publisher like Sage, researchers can only make their work open access by depositing it in Pure (‘green open access’). This is because making the work free to read on the journal’s webpages (‘gold open access’) carries a fee called an ‘article processing charge’ (APC) and can cost up to £3000.

For the remainder of 2019 though, Sage Publishing is offering Edge Hill authors a ‘zero rate APC’ deal – facilitating free gold open access.

There are a few conditions such as already-published or in-production articles being excempt. If you’re interested in benefitting from the deal, please contact Liam Bullingham, our Research Support Librarian to learn more: liam.bullingham@edgehill.ac.uk

Note: This blog post was originally shared on the Research Office blog. Find it here

If you’re a Pure user at EHU, by the time you read this you’ll have greater visibility of the open access (OA) status of your research outputs in the Pure back-end.

In the Assessment section of the output record, you will be presented with a colour-coded marker that tells you if REF OA compliance has been met, not met, or if Pure can’t determine it from the information supplied. You’ll also be given the dates that inform that OA status.

This information only appears if the output falls within the scope of the REF2021 Open Access Policy (i.e. articles that were accepted since April 2016), but knowing the OA compliance status can help you decide whether you need to request a REF exception for that output.

Remember:

• If you have any questions about your outputs,please contact Library and Learning Services.
• Questions about the REF or any other aspects of Pure can come to the Research Office.

This week we’re hosting a series of free events to celebrate Open Access Week 2019, open to everyone. Here’s what’s on offer:

Join Monday’s webinar here and sign up for a place on Wednesday’s ‘Board Games and Pizza’ here.

On Tuesday morning, we have ‘Open Access and My Research’ – a research cafe delivered in the informal style of a TED Talk. Three brilliant researchers share thoughts, tips and insights around open access and what it means to their research. Come join us at 9:30am in H2, Faculty of Health, Social Care and Medicine, Ormskirk campus.

We have a series of great events for Open Access Week this year. All are welcome!

Monday 21st October, 12-1pm
Open Book Publishers webinar
Learn about the work of this award-winning, non-profit, academic-led publisher that releases 20+ open access books a year and doesn’t charge its authors any fees!

Tuesday 22nd October, 9:30-10:30am | Room H2, Ormskirk campus
Research Cafe: Open Access and My Research
Researchers from all three faculties to share why they make their work open and what doing so means for collaborations, impact and society.

Wednesday 23rd October, 11:30am-1pm | Willow room, Catalyst
Board Games & Pizza
Enjoy free pizza while playing ‘The Game of Open Access’ or, if you’re really up for the challenge you could try ‘The Publishing Trap’. We’re trialling these games to start conversations and help demystify the world of open access.
– Book your place here

Friday 25th October, 9:30-10:30am | Willow room, Catalyst
Figshare: making research open and easy to find
Learn about Figshare, a great new place to share research data, practice research, academic posters, conference presentations and more. Figshare is open, has a global reach and makes your work discoverable.

About International Open Access Week
International Open Access Week is a global, community-driven week of action to open up access to research. The event is celebrated by individuals, institutions and organisations across the world, and is is led by a global advisory committee.

For More Information about Open Access Week please visit: http://www.openaccessweek.org/

#OAweek

Learn about the work of this award-winning, non-profit, academic-led publisher that releases 20+ open access books a year and doesn’t charge its authors any fees.

A special webinar for Open Access Week 2019, hosted by Library and Learning Services and free to everyone!

Lucy Barnes, Editor at Open Book Publishers, introduces this award-winning, non-profit, academic-led open access publisher. They don’t charge author fees; they publish innovative and acclaimed titles; and their books have been accessed over 2 million times. Interested in finding out more or publishing with OBP? Join us on 21 October!

Time: 12-1pm on Monday 21 October
Join the webinar: https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/bca23dc33eae41ffaca170a062e2b261
All are welcome

Open Access Week

It’s International Open Access Week on the 21st -27th October.

The theme this year is “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge”. The idea behind Open Access Week is to catalyse new conversations and create connections.

Library and Learning Services are running a series of events for OA week including a special research cafe and a board games & pizza event and more.