We have been pushing the message hard about the new REF open access policy but open access has many benefits beyond compliance. Evidence piles up that it can lead to increased impact and citations because people everywhere can read your work, not just the privileged elite with access to expensive journal subscriptions. So if you have uploaded a version of your paper to our repository RIS and it’s now available to download in Cronfa, here are a few suggestions of what you could do next to send it out into the world to get read…
What link to share?
Cronfa pages have reliable URLs and include the DOI (where available) to the published article too e.g. http://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa25191 so if your article is only open access on Cronfa, share the link to that page:
Copy the link from the address bar of your browser (on Windows = Ctrl+C to copy and Ctrl+V to paste)
Of course, if your paper is published “Gold” open access then using the DOI to link to the publisher site is preferred.
Ideas for promoting an article
- Include the link to your “Latest paper:” in your email signature
- Link to your paper on a LinkedIn profile (and/or post to any relevant LinkedIn groups)
- Uploading a copy of your paper to sites such as Academia.Edu or ResearchGate is not often permitted by publishers as these are commercial sites, however you can link to the open access version from profiles there.
- Ensure your paper is added to any online profiles you maintain (e.g. ORCID, ResearcherID, Google Scholar) and include a link to the open access version where possible.
- If you are attending or presenting at a conference, tweet a link to your paper when appropriate with the conference hashtag (or get someone else to do it for you if you aren’t on Twitter). If you are presenting a poster or have any paper handouts, create a short URL to share.
- Write a guest blog post including a link to the open access version. Contributing to “The Conversation” is also a great way to reach a wider audience – see our Swansea University authors here.
- Sharing links on social media is ideal – altmetrics can help you explore who is talking about your paper OR papers on similar topics. Use the Altmetric bookmarklet to access stats (or many publisher sites now include them). For example, using the Altmetric bookmarklet on this Cronfa article takes you to this site where you can see all the places where the article has been discussed online. If your research relates to this topic, there are articles or blog posts which could be commented on (with a link to your paper) or social media accounts which may be interested in your paper too.
- Promoting your article online requires some tact and diplomacy – ideally you will already be part of mutually-supportive online networks! If not, are there departmental / College / research groups or other accounts which could promote your work for you? Make sure they know about your newly open access paper.
What other ideas could be shared? Anything that has worked well for you? Let us know in the comments!
And: a few select links for more on promoting your research paper (& boosting impact in general):
- Publish, then publicise and monitor by Jenny Delasalle
- Professor Mark Read on on the effective communication of research in achieving wider impact (a Q &A)
- Sharing and promoting your article by Elsevier (emphasises Elsevier products primarily…)