In today's scholarly communication environment, your online presence as a researcher is becoming increasingly important. Your online identity is composed of many different systems and platforms, where possible there are benefits from linking these profiles.
Your online presence can play an important role in:
There are many different platforms available, some more important than others depending on your discipline, career level and research goals.
The Open Research Team is on hand to help you understand researcher profiles. The Research Profile Check service is available to current post-graduate research students and research-active staff at the University of Waikato. Contact the Open Research Team at library@waikato.ac.nz for more information.
Name ambiguity can be particularly problematic for people with common names, or whose publishing names have changed throughout their career. If your work is mistakenly associated with someone else, or you have multiple split profiles, this may negatively impact your research profile and metrics. Creating and using your ORCID iD is important to avoid confusion over your research identity, alongside regularly checking for split profiles, especially if you have recently changed your affiliation or publishing name.
If you need assistance or advice resolving issues with your research profiles you can contact the Open Research Team by emailing library@waikato.ac.nz.
Research staff at the University of Waikato will have a Staff Profile. Staff Profiles are managed from IRIS (the University's Integrated Research Information Management System). Staff profiles rank well in internet searches for your name, so taking time to populate your profile is worthwhile. Publications and outputs added to IRIS will automatically be displayed on your staff profile unless you opt to hide them, and teaching and supervision should feed through from associated systems. For assistance check the IRIS page in Te Hononga (staff only).
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identification) is a key tool that pulls all your research activity together under a permanent and unique identifier. The most important reason to have an ORCID iD is that it ensures that all your research outputs and activities are correctly attributed to you. You should set up an ORCID record as soon as you start publishing research outputs and provide it whenever you are asked (i.e. when submitting to a journal many publishers will ask for your ORCID).
You can easily create your own Google Scholar profile and "claim" any publications found therein. This will then show up when people search for your name or click on your publications. Like Scopus, it counts citations and provides statistics including your h-index. Note that you might find more citations reflected in Google Scholar than elsewhere. This is because databases such as Scopus count citations only for publications they index, and they index selectively. Google Scholar, by contrast, counts all citations it can find.
Having an online presence gives you the ability to craft your professional image and also provides a platform from which to promote your research. Because most social media platforms allow connection with others, they can also be a great way to build your network and raise your profile among your peers. Social media can consume a lot of your time, so make sure you are conscious about your use of social media for your research visibility.
The social media landscape can change quickly, and a platform that is useful for one discipline could be a timewaster in another research field. Our advice is to be intentional, talk to colleagues about what communities they gain value from, and reassess over time that you are still deriving value from the time you spend on a platform.
Academic social networks such as ResearchGate and Academia can be used to share research and connect with other researchers. Note, it's important to note that both Academia.edu and ResearchGate are for-profit companies and premium features do carry a cost. It is also important to be aware of your publishers' policy before uploading full-text items. It is better to link to an Open Access of your work (such as the version in Research Commons) than to upload your full-text publication.
Scopus is a multidisciplinary international indexing database - its main purpose is to curate high-quality scholarly material and count citations. If you author a piece of research that is indexed in Scopus, a ScopusID will automatically be assigned to you along with an associated profile. If you have work indexed in Scopus, it is very important to check that it is correctly attributed to you and associated with your ID. Linking with your ORCID record can reduce the likelihood of mistakes in your Scopus profile. You can update and correct your Scopus profile yourself or with the help of the Open Research Team by emailing library@waikato.ac.nz.
Overton is a searchable index of global policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications and working papers. As a researcher, you can search for the impact of your research in several ways including mentions of your name, citations attributed to you, or searching a list of DOIs.
A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a unique identifier, providing a permanent link to items available over the internet. The University of Waikato Library is a member of Crossref, a DOI registration agency, and we can help you to assign DOIs to your research work.
DOIs can be assigned to any object that is accessible online. Most publishers will assign DOIs for you, for your traditionally published journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers.
Are you publishing a scholarly journal or online conference proceeding? If so we can work with you to provide DOIs for your service.
We can also provide DOIs for works such as theses, reports, working papers, performances, and other digital research outputs. We can host these works online via the University’s institutional repository Research Commons.
Contact us at researchcommons@waikato.ac.nz and we’ll get you started!
For assistance, reach out to the Open Research Team at library@waikato.ac.nz.