Building your researcher profile

Online researcher profiles are an essential way to showcase and disseminate your research. Having a high-quality, professional online presence will help with:

• Career building: Potential employers will likely examine your online profile to verify your professional identity and view your past research.
• Gaining funding: Grants may require proof that you are a proficient researcher who can deliver results and effectively communicate findings. Funding applications often require CVs of all named parties to be included. Your profile can help you generate one at short notice.
• Finding collaborators: Having a quality profile makes it easier for others to discover you and your research. This improves the likelihood of finding research partners who understand your work. It also gives them confidence in your professionalism.
• Increasing impact and engagement: Your online profile makes you and your work more discoverable to a variety of stakeholders such as policymakers, government, medicine, industry, society - indigenous groups, parents and teachers.

When choosing which platforms you want to use, consider the following:

• What are you trying to achieve? Do you want to share your research, connect with others in your field or promote yourself?
• Who is your audience? Where are they likely to find you? For example, academics and researchers in your discipline will be using very different platforms from potential employers or the wider public.
• If you have profiles already, how are they serving you and your research communication? Consider whether what you already have could be tweaked or improved upon. If something is missing, what is it? What profiles would complement them?
• Where do you find research in your area of interest? What platforms are others in your discipline using? These could be good places to consider building up an online presence.
• How much time can you sustainably dedicate to maintaining your profiles? Publication tracking and professional networking profiles can be low maintenance, whereas social media profiles require frequent updates and regular maintenance.

Common platforms

These are some platforms that are potential places to develop your professional online presence. You can explore further options relevant to your discipline by doing your own research and asking your colleagues what works (or doesn't work) for them.

Publication tracking and metrics platforms

These platforms largely focus on evidencing your professional career by tracking publications and their associated metrics. They have little or no personalisation or networking functionality.

• ORCID
• Scopus ID and author profile
• Web of Science ResearcherID allows you to create an author profile that displays your research outputs that are indexed in Web of Science, their metrics and your co-authorship collaborations.
• Google Scholar profile links together your research that is indexed by Google Scholar. You can also view your works' readership and reuse metrics. We recommend using a personal Google account to create your Google Scholar profile. When adding details to your profile, use your University email in the "Email for verification" section. This ensures you will still be able to access your account if you leave the University.

Professional networking platforms

These profiles enable networking and promotion as well as tracking publications and metrics. You can personalise and customise your profile to promote research (both yours and other researchers of note), describe and link to your past and current research projects and highlight opportunities for research collaboration.

Platforms to consider:

• Your University of Auckland Discovery Profile showcases your research activity and publications. You can also advertise research collaboration opportunities. This is the most prominent profile that will appear when someone searches for your name.
• LinkedIn is ideal for connecting with other professionals, showcasing your skills and finding job opportunities. You can also join groups and communities focused on your research area to exchange ideas and information.
• ResearchGate facilitates publication sharing*, researcher networking and collaboration, particularly in the disciplines of natural sciences, engineering, social sciences and medicine.
• SSRN also facilitates sharing of publications, early-stage research or preprints* and networking within the social science disciplines. See their guide: SSRN Starts here.
• Academia.edu is a social networking tool for academics. After you have signed up, you can upload information about your publications*, research interests and CV. You can also follow research in a particular field.
  

* If you choose to share your research on these platforms, you must comply with publisher policies for open access and self-archiving.

Social media platforms

These platforms focus on outreach, engagement, networking and promotion of your research to a wider and more general audience. We recommended that you keep your professional profiles separate from your personal profiles.

Read more about Public engagement.

Platforms to consider:

• X (formerly known as Twitter) allows you to share your research in short communications and connect with other researchers. For more, see Academic Transfer's blog post How to use X (Twitter) as a scientist and Taylor & Francis' Guide to Twitter for researchers.
• Instagram is a photo-sharing platform where you can highlight your findings, methodologies, and scientific breakthroughs using images and captions. This can be a great way to share your figures and research action shots. For more advice, see How Academics Can Use Instagram to Build Community.
• Facebook can be a useful platform to announce and share links to your research. It is recommended to create a separate account from your personal account. This will help maintain a more professional presentation.
• YouTube, Slideshare and Vimeo are video hosting platforms where you might upload a recent interview, speech or conference presentation.

Websites or blogs

CampusPress is a WordPress platform for education. It’s fully supported, user friendly and designed for students, academic staff and digital services.

CampusPress is mainly used at the University for:

• Research projects
• Conferences
• Certain marketing campaigns
• Personal websites for professional use where the purpose is aligned with the activities of the University

Sample shedule

Weekly

• One social media post about what you're working on
• One post about an interesting article you've read
• One interaction with your interest group or another researcher

Monthly

• Scan for new social media accounts of interest to you
• Participate in community-of-practice forums and discussions
• Read new research in your area. Set up alerts!
• Notify your faculty social media team of any exciting updates

Six-monthly

• Update LinkedIn and Discovery Profile with new articles, works, research activities and opportunities
• Update your email signature with your latest publication (include the DOI!)

Yearly

• Attend conferences
• Look for public engagement and outreach opportunities

Trying to work that academic hustle, but don’t know how to get your name out there? Wondering about the best way to promote your research or track your publications?

In this online workshop, we’ll discuss the reasons why research profiles are important, look at the different types of profiles and their purposes, and brainstorm some strategies to help you manage your online identities. This will help doctoral candidates and early career researchers (ECRs) set the stage for their future research careers.