Develop your researcher profile

Creating an online profile can help you meet potential research collaborators and increase the visibility of your published research. An author ID like ORCiD is especially important to distinguish yourself from other authors with similar names. You could also talk about your research on social media, and make your research outputs open access so that more people can read them.

Online Profiles

You should consider creating an online profile to:

Increase the visibility of your research and scholarship.
Solve the issue of author name ambiguity and attribution.
Maximise the citation rate of your research.
Increase the chance of making new contacts to collaborate with in future research.
Increase your options for funding.

Strategies for your online profile

Describe your research in a brief summary.
Collect your research outputs and deposit to Research@Lincoln and Data@Lincoln.
Focus on building a research community.
Network both online and in person.

Considerations for your online profile

Where do you want to present yourself?
Twitter? Blog? LinkedIn? YouTube? ORCiD?
How much time do you have to maintain your professional profile?
How much control and how much interaction do you want?
How do you create a balance between privacy and visibility?
What are the copyright considerations when uploading your research?
When and how do you want to use social media compared to professional media?

Author IDs

Why are author IDs important?

An author identity is a unique identity that helps:

Group any name variations that you have published under.
Differentiate you from authors with similar names.
Link all your publications together.
Improve your impact and discoverability as a researcher.
Gather metrics such as citation counts and h-indexes.

Consider using the following services:

ORCiD (Open Researcher and Contributor ID)	This is an open, non-profit, community-based effort to create a registry of unique researcher identifiers, and a way to link research activities and outputs to these identifiers. It’s now the most common researcher ID system used by many publishers, and it also lets you connect other ID systems together.
Publons (Clarivates Analytics/Web of Science database)	Connects to your ORCID Allows you to manage your publication lists, track times cited counts and h-index, identify potential collaborators and avoid author misidentification. If you’ve done any peer reviews, Publons helps you record, verify and showcase your peer review contributions for use in promotion applications etc. You get credit even if your reviews are anonymous and the manuscript is never published.
Scopus ID (Scopus database)	Connects to your ORCID Manage your publication lists, track times cited counts and h-index, identify potential collaborators and avoid author misidentification. A FAQ is available at Scopus Author ID
Google Scholar Citations	Keep track of citations to your work, check who is citing your publications, graph citations over time, and compute several citation metrics. You can also make your profile public, which then may appear in Google Scholar search results.

ORCiD

ORCiD (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is an open, non-profit effort to create a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a way to link research activities and outputs to these identifiers. Your 16-digit ID number can link together different versions of your name and disambiguates your name from other researchers. You control the information on your profile and how much of it you want to share publicly.

ORCiD numbers are used in key research workflows, including manuscript submissions, grant applications and patent applications. You can add your ORCiD to your staff profile and CV, and you can carry it between institutions throughout your career.

Lincoln University staff can register for an ORCiD number in Elements through My Data Sources. (Step-by-step instructions are also available.)

Students can register directly on the ORCiD website.

Increase your visibility

Create a professional online profile on social media (eg Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube or your own website) to talk about your research and follow other researchers.
Pitch a new article to The Conversation. The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit publisher of research-based news and analysis. It connects your academic expertise with journalistic skills and flair to create a product that’s unique and extremely valuable and powerful. As a researcher, you will extend your research reach globally and directly to practitioners, key decision-makers and the public by adding your voice to the Conversation. Lincoln University is a member of The Conversation and its three experienced NZ editors can help you craft your research so it engages and connects with a global audience. It also facilitates faster publication than journals and enables timely communication of current research on topical issues.
- To pitch a new article to The Conversation read the following How To Guide.
Publish in an Open Access journal.
Deposit your conference papers, journal articles (including from ‘closed access’ journals), thesis and other outputs written while at Lincoln into Research@Lincoln. (Lincoln staff should deposit via Elements.)
Deposit data supporting your paper into Data@Lincoln.
Submit a video about your research into the Lincoln University Living Heritage.
Create a researcher identity with ORCiD to unambiguously link publications to you and any author name variations.

Contact us to find out more about creating a presence in the Lincoln University archives.