Academics' online presence:

Assessing and shaping your online visibility

Sarah Goodier

26 October 2012

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Why should you care?• 7 out of 10 people who use the

internet have searched for information about other people (Pew study

results available at: http://pewinternet.org/)

(From: Google y la reputación en línea del usuario; available at:http://blogs.eset-la.com/laboratorio/2012/08/13/google-reputacion-linea-usuario/)

Why should you care?• Scholarship is increasingly ‘going

digital’– Universities staff profiles– Academic networks connect

researchers around the globe– Journal articles online– Social media

• The expectation is that you can be found online

PRESENCE

Extent to which you as the scholar

are visible to others online

GROUPS

The extent of your

engagement with

communities

SHARING

Extent to which you

allow users to exchange and

distribute your

information

IDENTITY

The extent to which others can identify

you online as a scholar

CONNECTIONS

The relevance and appeal of your work to

others

CONVERSATIONS

Extent to which others engage with you and you with others

REPUTATION

Your online standing and the extent to

which you influence

others

Building Blocks of the

Networked Scholar

ADAPTED FROM

Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social mediaJan H. Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens, Ian P. McCarthy, Bruno S. SilvestreBusiness Horizons (2011) 54, 241—251Read the article here*

• The honeycomb of building blocks can be used to assess your level of online connectivity as a scholar.

• They are not exclusive and neither need all be present.

• They are constructs that allow us to make sense of different aspects of a networked scholar.

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Do you know how you appear online?

?

What is your digital

footprint?

What is your digital

shadow?

The content you create

The content created about

you

Photo by: Sarah Goodier

• Know what information (both footprint and shadow) is out there

• Take control!– Control your footprint– Minimise your shadow

What can you do?

Am I making an impact?

Can I be found online?

The process

Consider

• What do you want your digital footprint to look like?

• What kind of online presence do you want?

• What do you have time to manage effectively?

What do I want?What can I realistically

achieve?

ASSESS

Assess & monitor your general online presence

How?

• Regular Google searches

• On-going Google alerts of your name

• Measure your digital footprint

Analyse the results• How many of the results are relevant?• What types of results come up?

– Are all of them from your institutions? – Publications? – Online profiles?– Facebook photos?

• If the results are obviously nothing to do with you, would that be obvious to someone else looking for you?

• Consider what you would like to appear

Your profile as an individual• Profiles

– Academia.edu– Facebook(?)– Your institution– Google Scholar– etc.

• Update, improve and maintain it; Decide on a main profile - link the others to it

• Separate professional and personal online presence

• Be consistent!

Personal

Professional

Improve your profile

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Academia.edu - analytics

Social media analytics

Facebook analysis

http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/08/wolframalpha-personal-analytics-for-facebook/

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My question is “Am I making an impact?”

Broaden impact

http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/

GET YOUR OUTPUTS OUT THERE

Maximise the visibility of your work

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Improving the availability of your outputs

• Put journal articles you can online– Check out Sherpa Romeo for publisher

archiving policies (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/)

Is my research making an impact?

Can it be found online?

Check out Sherpa Romeo for publisher archiving policies

(http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/)

Improving the availability of your outputs

• Archive!– in repositories– In subject portals

Is my research making an impact?

Can it be found online?

Archive in open access repositories

Use discipline-specific archives

Improving the availability of your outputs

• Publish in open access journals

Is my research making an impact?

Can it be found online?

Publish in open access journals

(as of 25 Oct 2012)

Open advantage!

• Open access publishing increases visibility, opportunity for use and possible impact

• Increase in citations arising from open access:– Of the 35 studies surveyed, 27 have shown a

citations advantage (the % increase ranges from 45% increase to as high as 600%), 4 showing no advantage

Swan A (2010) The Open Access Citation Advantage: Studies and Results to Date. Available at http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18516/

Improving the availability of your outputs

• Open everything – all scholarly output possible (teaching, popular, etc.)

Is my research making an impact?

Can it be found online?

Upload videos & podcasts

Upload presentations

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Maximise your discoverability

Take metadata seriously

“Well said! "metadata is a love note to the future" from @textfiles talk via @nypl_labs & @kissane http://t.co/FjvCLVUZ 

CONNECT & COMMUNICATE

Communicating & connecting

• Social bookmarking– Share links relevant to your subject (blogs, news articles, research sites,

etc)– Bookmark papers and share useful

references

Share links via Delicious

CiteUlike

Mendeley

Mendeley analytics

Communicating & connecting

• Microblogging – Twitter– Many academics & researchers tweet

Start tweeting

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/09/02/academic-tweeters-your-suggestions-in-full/

Some Twitter guidelines• Get into a routine • It is legit to retweet your tweets especially if

rephrased• Provide updates from special events• Use hashtags• Follow others / reciprocate • Promote your Twitter profile through your email

signature, business card, blog posts etc.• Being careful with Twitter• Tweet about each new publication, website update or new

blog that the project completes.• Ask for feedback• Link to a URL of publication, presentation, podcast etc• Tweet about new developments of interest • Retweet interesting material• Use Twitter for ‘crowd sourcing’ research activities

Mollet, A; Moran, D and Dunleavy, P (2011) Using Twitter in university research, teaching and impact activities, LSE Research Online

Communicating & connecting

• Blogging as a scholarly activity– Create and write a blog for colleagues,

community and/or students

Communicating & connecting

• ‘The verdict: is blogging or tweeting about research papers worth it?’ (http

://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/04/19/blog-tweeting-papers-worth-it/)

• Publicising the research made a big impact on access and downloads: ‘The papers that were tweeted and blogged had at least more than 11 times the number of downloads than their sibling paper which was left to its own devices in the institutional repository.’

Communicating & connecting

• Start commenting and join in discussions on e.g. Mendeley, Academia.edu, etc.

Thank you

• For more resources, please see the OpenUCT Delicious bookmarks tagged ‘onlinepresence’: http://www.delicious.com/openuct/onlinepresence

• All screenshots used purely for illustrative purposes• Some slides used and/or adapted from: Laura Czerniewicz’s presentation ‘Academics' online presence - assessing &

shaping visibility 2012’: http://www.slideshare.net/laura_Cz/academics-online-presence-assessing-shaping-visibility-2012,

http://openuct.uct.ac.za@OpenExpl

Excluding images, screenshots and logos and/or unless otherwise indicated on content