Jan 2016
From Scielo in perspective Recently on the ResearchGate blog, Professor Rolf Henrik Nilsson of the University of Gothenburg proposed the recurrent question that always comes to new researchers (and not so new), namely: How can you increase the visibility of your published articles?
Most researchers who are not in the select group of privileged who publish in elite-journals or Q1 journals, wonder what is the recipe to enhance the impact of their publications.
Professor Nilsson started an interesting debate that, within the two weeks since he published his post, has received about 30 contributions from dozens of universities and institutions as distant from each other as Estonia Physical Society, Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Melbourne, California State University, Spanish National Research Council, Universidad de Monterrey, University of Waikato, etc.
Nilsson’s starting point focuses on the goal of increasing citations impact as a matter of public relations. He does not consider the Impact Factor of elite-journals, WoS, Scopus, etc.; this will be the result of a proper promotion campaign. To start the debate, Nilsson offers some classic actions and invites other researchers to reveal their helpful advice (tips).
- Publish preprints/post prints in repositories like arXiv or similar.
- Take a good amount of reprints for upcoming conferences that you will attend.
- Write a press release with the aid of the press office of your university.
- Send notes to an appropriate e-mail list.
- Include copies of the paper on the news panels in the canteens of universities you work and visit.
- Attach copies of the first page of your article on the billboard of social rooms of your working place or at institutions you visit for lectures.
- Make a brief presentation (free) of your paper on campus, and serve cookies and coffee to the public.
- Give a conference on the topic in class and then include it in the exam subjects.
- Ask your students to make a review of the paper or to complement it, and assign qualifications.
- Aggregate the paper’s title on your Web CV page under “Recent Publications”.
- Advertise the publication on sites like ResearchGate or Facebook, Academia.edu, Mendeley, Scribd, ORCID, Epernicus, and all other free social media sites you know, and if you are not registered, do so and advertise your work.
- If possible, publish the article in Open Access journals, such as SciELO and PLOS journals.
- Send a copy of your article to authors who write textbooks for higher education institutions. The authors review their books regularly and it is possible that they will include your article in the bibliography of the new edition. Both students and teachers read the books and your article will be included.
- Send copies of your article to all the authors who have been included in your references, they will thank you for having been cited, and it is possible that by reciprocity, they will cite you in the future.
- Write with a good amount of coauthors, and ask each one of them to engage on public relations, which will increase the dissemination.
- Regardless of your research field being large or small it is much more important whether it is a rapidly growing one or whether the community is losing interest on it. It is not important that your area is large; it is more important whether it is growing.
