Sharing your research with a wider audience can make you more visible in your field. Greater visibility will enhance your reputation and the impact of your research.
Publication is the beginning of research impact and visibility, thus dissemination of research publications has to be proactive. Researchers can promote their research work in three stages: (1) manuscript preparation and submission; (2) post-publication promoting; and (3) after receiving mentions/citations (monitoring).
Create and maintain an up-to-date online profile
Include your research interests, publications, affiliations and contact info on platforms such as the UJ research portal/ Pure
Get a unique author identifier — ORCiD
Register for an ORCiD to uniquely identify yourself, link your publications and ensure your work is correctly attributed across platforms.
Engage in scholarly networking communities
Join platforms such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley, or Google Scholar to share your work, connect with peers and follow developments in your field.
Share your work through open-access platforms
Deposit your articles in institutional or subject-specific repositories such as the UJ institutional and data repository to increase discoverability and citation potential.
Present at conferences and webinars
Visibility is not only digital—presenting your research helps grow your academic footprint and opens doors for collaboration.
Use consistent name formatting
Always publish under the same name and affiliation to improve author disambiguation in databases and citation indexes.
Promote your work on social media
Use platforms such as X, LinkedIn to announce publications, share insights, and participate in relevant discussions.
Collaborate and co-author strategically
Partner with colleagues locally and internationally to expand your reach and visibility across multiple research networks.
By making your research visible and accessible you increase chances of your research being noticed, used and having impact, thus increasing your own reputation and chances of success in your academic work.
Researchers are embracing a variety of activities and tools to promote work, connect with other researchers, and engage in scholarly discourse. Increasingly, the activities related to promoting their research take place at all stages of the research process: from the discovery stage, through analysis and writing process, through to publishing and outreach.
Research impact is important for researchers to improve their research reputation, increase university ranking, and getting grants from funders. As such, dissemination of research findings plays a vital role.