Increase your Impact Profile

UQ eSpace is our institutional repository which allows for all research produced at UQ to be accessible to everyone. UQ eSpace can enhance discovery of UQ research via search engines, allow researchers to maintain a complete and accurate collection of all UQ scholarly works that feeds into central UQ systems and increases research visibility and potential return of research investment.

A researcher identifier uniquely identifies a researcher and can assign research outputs in digital environments, such as UQ eSpace, UQ RDM or external citations databases like Web of Science and Scopus. Identifiers allow researchers to claim authorship, maintain an online presence, track citations, and manage their scholarly record. Persistent identifiers (PIDs) are unique links that guarantee sustainable access to your publications, even if the title or storage location changes. Other than ORCiD, the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a commonly used PID for most academic outputs, with ISBN, ISSN and PURL (Personalized URL) as other examples.

ORCiD (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier) is a free international system that identifies academic authors and their work. An ORCID ID is a unique persistent identifier (PID) that will distinguish you from other researchers and belong to you throughout your scholarly career to ensure you and your work are recognised. Link ORCID to Crossref and DataCite to ensure that your ORCID profile is updated automatically.

Scopus Author Identifier assigns each author a unique ID and groups together all documents produced by the author to generate an author profile including identifiers, associated document lists, citations, h-index, and research areas. Scopus Author Identifier allows you to export your profile to SciVal for research performance infographics, benchmarking, and collaborative partnerships. You can also import your Scopus Author Identifier and publications into ORCID.

Researcher ID (on Publons) is a unique identifier offered through the Web of Science and used to track researcher outputs and update publication records to ensure correct author attribution and disambiguation.  The Web of Science ResearcherID is used to keep publications synchronized across the Web of Science suite of solutions: Web of Science, InCites, Converis, and Publons. Publons is a free service using an improved Web of Science ResearcherID for academics to monitor, validate and promote their peer review and editorial contributions for academic journals.

Google Scholar Citation Profiles allows researchers to create a private or public profile that lists author publications and automatically updated citation metrics, powered by the Google Scholar search engine. Google Scholar Citations is not interoperable with ORCID or other researcher identifiers.

Strategic scholarly publishing involves following a systematic approach to ensure you publish in the most effective outlet and maximise success in publishing endeavours. This will help raise your academic profile, increase the visibility and impact of your work and contribute to scholarly discussions in your field.

• Think about which journals are best for your research
• Check what will maximise your work’s scholarly impact
• Submit for a rewarding academic publishing experience
• Promote your research at three different stages 
• Track and evaluate your article’s performance.

Open access (OA) refers to unrestricted online access to articles published in scholarly outlets. Types of open access publications available online include articles, books and book chapters, conference papers, theses, working papers, data, images and open educational resources including textbooks, video content and lecture notes. OA provides free, unrestricted access to research while increasing visibility and exposure of your research, helping meet the mandate of major funding bodies and supports UQ in meeting key research objectives.

LinkedIn is a free online career platform focused on industry, business and recruitment. With the ability to outline your professional background, build a network of peers, join professional groups and share content, LinkedIn offers the potential to communicate research results to a corporate audience that differs from standard social media users. By actively engaging with the LinkedIn community, you can improve your profile and the visibility of your research.

Twitter is a free social media platform which can be a useful tool to communicate with peers, ask questions, promote research and develop their professional networks to increase engagement, citations and translation. This platform allows researchers to quickly share, in 140 characters or less, research updates, outputs, interviews, blog posts, and presentations. By linking to your publications and research activities, there is significant scope to increase the visibility of your research.

TrackImpact is a free, publicly accessible platform for promotion of research projects and collaboration with peers, linked directly to UQ Impact Tracker accounts. Through automated project creation and intuitive search and filtering functionality, the platform makes it easy for users to create project profiles and identify projects in relevant fields of research for collaboration opportunities.

Academic blogs are personal websites where new content is posted regularly, generally consisting of opinion pieces, non-specialist articles or research commentary. A blog can be useful to develop writing practices, promote your work and disseminate research with a broader audience without relying on publishers or external staff. Blogs require regular commitment as you decide when to publish but can be effective in promoting research and raising visibility. Guest blogs such as The Conversation are an alternative option as you can contribute a single article or multiple pieces without creating your own blog, finding an audience and keeping it up to date.

Personal websites allow for individual creativity and comprehensive description of research findings and professional success without any assigned formats and platform restrictions. A personal website should be a single source of information about you and your work, including links to all of your research outputs, academic accounts and social media profiles. Remember that websites can be costly to promote and maintain and are only as good as the content and time invested.

Academic networks are user-friendly networking sites designed for the academic community to build profiles, connect with other researchers, share scholarly works and improve the visibility of their research. Remember that many academic networks are commercial entities and the normal rules of copyright apply in relation to sharing articles in academic networks and online repositories, where use of the platform will depend on what agreement or licence you have with the publisher. It is advised that researchers place publications in UQ eSpace and link academic networks to those outputs. Below are some of the most popular networks.

Academia.edu is a commercial online platform for researchers to create a profile, showcase their research for feedback and select areas of interest to find user networks with similar interests.

ResearchGate is an interactive for-profit academic network which allows researchers to create a profile and promote their work, share publications, engage in discussion with peers, and find collaborators.

Mendeley is a powerful reference manager and academic network, acquired by Elsevier in 2013. Similar to other networks, you can create a profile, share research and reference lists with the ability to find cross-institutional and interdisciplinary collaborators.