Naa Kai Amanor-Mfoafo
Posted 10th September 2020

Congratulations on your recently published article!!!. Most researchers heave a sigh of relief upon receiving news of their published article as they hope to take some time off before starting their next article. However, is that all there is to publishing your research? No, the hard work continues.  You need to make sure you share your research with the academic research community to make it more relevant. The current digital age offers researchers a wide range of avenues to share their research globally. In this write up, I share a few points on increasing the visibility of your research.

1. Share your research online
Sharing your research online allows you to promote your research whilst targeting the appropriate audience. Various online research databases allow you to sign up and upload your research publications at no cost. Examples of such platforms include Researchgate, Google Scholar, Academia, Semantic Scholar just to mention a few. They offer the following advantages:

  • Allows you to share your research with the global research community.
  • Track the usage of your publications in terms of the number of times your article is cited, information on who is reading and citing your work. Google Scholar, Researchgate, Academia, etc. allow you to view your article citations.
  • Collaborate with other researchers in your field. For instance, Researchgate allows you to follow researchers in your area of research. With this you would receive a notification any time researchers you follow publish new articles. This is done vice versa so other researchers can also follow you and receive updates on your article publications.

You can also share links to your research articles with fellow researchers using social media platforms such as Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. You could also create short video clips of yourself presenting your research work and upload them on Youtube.

2. Sign up for ORCID
An ORCID allows you to make your research more visible. It provides you with an ID that distinguishes your research work from other researchers with names similar to yours. For example, if there are three authors with the name David Owusu, an ORCID would help differentiate their research work. No matter the changes you make to your name your ORCID remains the same so people can easily see details of your research outputs. Read more on ORCID.

3. Publish Open access
All open access journal articles are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication. Open access publishing makes your research outputs freely available online. Your published research can then be downloaded, read and reused under certain licensing conditions. Publishing your research in open access journals and books, or making outputs available through repositories, can increase both reach and impact. Studies have shown that open access articles are viewed and cited more often than articles that require subscription before usage. Read more on Open Access

4. Cite yourself
It is acceptable to cite your previous work in your research publications. Some researchers think it is unethical to cite your own work. It may interest you to note that the more you cite your work in your research the more it is made visible to other researchers. If you have made a point or conducted research in one paper that you would like to build on in a later paper, you must cite yourself, just as you would cite the work of others. Citing yourself can be considered as appropriate when you write on the same topic for a second, third, or fourth time with your writing reflecting new approaches and insights into that topic to demonstrate intellectual growth.

In conclusion, there are many benefits to making your research visible as a researcher. These include getting credit for your valuable findings, making research findings more reproducible and replicable, and supporting the preservation of knowledge.

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