10 Ways to Boost the Impact of Your Research

Consider your research goals and the audience your research needs to reach. Make decisions accordingly and consider all kinds of impact, scholarly and non-scholarly.

Think carefully when choosing keywords and titles. Remember that your research will generally appear higher in search results where a keyword is used multiple times, especially in the title and abstract.

In your email signature, in any online profiles, in submissions, wherever you can. Ensure that you’ve automated as much profile building as possible.

Using persistent identifiers such as ORCID ID and DOIs minimises the risk that your work will be misattributed and optimises the ability of various tools to gather and report on impact and attention.

Check that your name, affiliation and publications are correct in all databases (IRIS, Scopus, Google Scholar etc). Link profiles and add additional identifiers wherever possible

According to recent research, Open Access articles receive on average 44% more citations than non Open Access articles (White et al, 2019).

Many publishing contracts allow accepted manuscripts to be deposited in repositories under certain conditions, even if you haven’t paid a fee for it to be made Open Access. 

If appropriate, consider sharing your data sets, software or other digital resources. With the appropriate identifiers, these can then be credited back to you as other researchers make use of them.

Make your work as visible as possible. Share it wherever you can, for example, at conferences, on your personal website, through social media or online academic networks.

Writing for a wider audience, for example by publishing a lay summary or a blog can open up your research to a wider range of readers, including influencers and policymakers as well as the public, enhancing impact outside of academia