In our digital world, if you use the web, you have an online presence. And academics are no exception. Universities have webpages profiling their staff. Academic networks, like LinkedIn, Academia.edu and more, are used by researchers around the globe to keep in contact with colleagues and collaborators. And social media are everywhere you turn. As an academic, you want your research outputs to be found and read. Making a difference and having an influence is almost a job requirement. Nowadays, the expectation is that you can be found online. So, what can you do to be aware of how you appear online? And, what can you do to increase your visibility? This presentation was part of a session for academics wanting to find out how they can review their existing digital footprints and shadows, make decisions about what kind of online presence they would like and plan how they can achieve it. Several different possible ways of increasing their visibility as well as the visibility of their research and their outputs are discussed.

1. Academics' online presence:
Assessing and shaping your online visibility
Sarah Goodier
26 October 2012

2. IDC Report: The 2011 Digital Universe Study: Extracting Value from Chaos, June 2011
http://www.emc.com/collateral/demos/microsites/emc-digital-universe-2011/index.htm
Slide from Laura Czerniewicz’s presentation ‘Academics' online presence - assessing & shaping visibility 2012’:
http://www.slideshare.net/laura_Cz/academics-online-presence-assessing-shaping-visibility-2012

3. Why should you care?
• 7 out of 10 people who use the internet
have searched for information about other
people (Pew study results available at: http://pewinternet.org/)
(From: Google y la reputación en línea del usuario; available at:
http://blogs.eset-la.com/laboratorio/2012/08/13/google-reputacion-linea-usuario/)

4. Why should you care?
• Scholarship is increasingly ‘going digital’
– Universities staff profiles
– Academic networks connect researchers
around the globe
– Journal articles online
– Social media
• The expectation is that you can be found
online

5. http://www.slideshare.net/laura_Cz/academics-online-presence-assessing-shaping-visibility-2012
Slide from Laura Czerniewicz’s presentation ‘Academics' online presence - assessing & shaping visibility 2012’:
Building Blocks
PRESENCE
Extent to which
of the
Networked
you as the
scholar are
visible to others
SHARING
online
CONNECTIONS Scholar
Extent to which The relevance • The honeycomb of
you allow users and appeal of building blocks can be
to exchange and your work to used to assess your level of
distribute your others online connectivity as a
information IDENTITY
scholar.
The extent to
• They are not exclusive and
which others can
neither need all be
identify you
present.
online as a
scholar
CONVERSATIONS REPUTATION • They are constructs that
allow us to make sense of
Extent to which Your online different aspects of a
others engage standing and the networked scholar.
with you and you extent to which ADAPTED FROM
with others you influence
GROUPS others Social media? Get serious!
Understanding the functional
The extent of
building blocks of social media
your engagement
Jan H. Kietzmann, Kristopher
with
Hermkens, Ian P. McCarthy,
communities
Bruno S. Silvestre
Business Horizons (2011) 54,
241—251
Read the article here*

6. Do you know how you appear
online?
?

7. What is your
digital footprint?
The content you
create
The content
created about
you
What is your
digital shadow?
Photo by: Sarah Goodier

8. What can you do?
• Know what information (both footprint
and shadow) is out there
• Take control!
– Control your footprint
Am I making an
– Minimise your shadow impact?
Can I be found
online?

9. The process

10. Consider
• What do you want your digital footprint to
look like?
• What kind of online presence do you want?
What do I want?
• What do you have time to What can I
realistically
achieve?
manage effectively?

11. Assess & monitor your general online presence
ASSESS

12. How?
• Regular Google searches
• On-going Google alerts of your name
• Measure your digital footprint

13. Analyse the results
• How many of the results are relevant?
• What types of results come up?
– Are all of them from your institutions?
– Publications?
– Online profiles?
– Facebook photos?
• If the results are obviously nothing to do
with you, would that be obvious to
someone else looking for you?
• Consider what you would like to appear

14. Your profile as an individual
• Profiles
– Academia.edu
– Facebook(?) Personal Professional
– Your institution
– Google Scholar
– etc.
• Update, improve and maintain it; Decide on a
main profile - link the others to it
• Separate professional and personal online
presence
• Be consistent!

15. Profiling Academics Online: Online Profiling Toolkit
Improve your profile
Van Schailkwyk, F Profiling academics online
http://www.slideshare.net/scap_uct/pao-scap-toolkit

16. Academia.edu - analytics

18. Social media analytics

19. Facebook
analysis
http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/08/wolframalpha-
personal-analytics-for-facebook/

20. My question is
“Am I making an impact?”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cindy_mc/6967806783/ Thanks to Sam Gross

21. Broaden impact
http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/

22. Maximise the visibility of your work
GET YOUR OUTPUTS OUT
THERE

23. http://www.flickr.com/photos/87913776@N00/5129607997 CC-BY

24. Improving the availability
of your outputs
• Put journal articles you can online
– Check out Sherpa Romeo for publisher
archiving policies (
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/)
Is my research
making an impact?
Can it be found online?

25. Check out Sherpa Romeo for publisher
archiving policies
(http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/)

26. Improving the availability
of your outputs
• Archive!
– in repositories
– In subject portals
Is my research
making an impact?
Can it be found online?

27. Archive in open access repositories

28. Use discipline-specific archives

32. Improving the availability
of your outputs
• Publish in open access journals
Is my research
making an impact?
Can it be found online?

33. Publish in open access journals
(as of 25 Oct 2012)

34. Open advantage!
• Open access publishing increases visibility,
opportunity for use and possible impact
• Increase in citations arising from open
access:
– Of the 35 studies surveyed, 27 have shown a
citations advantage (the % increase ranges
from 45% increase to as high as 600%), 4
showing no advantage
Swan A (2010) The Open Access Citation Advantage: Studies and Results to Date. Available at http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18516/

35. Improving the availability
of your outputs
• Open everything – all scholarly output
possible (teaching, popular, etc.)
Is my research
making an impact?
Can it be found online?

36. Upload videos & podcasts

37. Upload presentations
http://www.slideshare.net/laura_Cz/why-open-education-matters-
in-south-africa

38. Maximise your discoverability
Take metadata seriously
“Well said! "metadata is a
love note to the future"
from @textfiles talk
via @nypl_labs &
@kissane
http://t.co/FjvCLVUZ

39. CONNECT & COMMUNICATE

40. Communicating & connecting
• Social bookmarking
– Share links relevant to your subject
(blogs, news articles, research sites, etc)
– Bookmark papers and share useful references

41. Share links via Delicious

42. CiteUlike

43. Mendeley

45. Mendeley analytics

46. Communicating & connecting
• Microblogging – Twitter
– Many academics & researchers tweet

47. Start
tweeting
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/09/02/academic-tweeters-your-suggestions-in-full/

48. Some Twitter guidelines
• Get into a routine
• It is legit to retweet your tweets especially if
rephrased
• Provide updates from special events
• Use hashtags
• Follow others / reciprocate
• Promote your Twitter profile through your email
signature, business card, blog posts etc.
• Being careful with Twitter
• Tweet about each new publication, website update or new
blog that the project completes.
• Ask for feedback
• Link to a URL of publication, presentation, podcast etc
• Tweet about new developments of interest
• Retweet interesting material
• Use Twitter for ‘crowd sourcing’ research activities
Mollet, A; Moran, D and Dunleavy, P (2011) Using Twitter in university research, teaching and impact activities, LSE Research Online

49. Communicating & connecting
• Blogging as a scholarly activity
– Create and write a blog for colleagues,
community and/or students

52. Communicating & connecting
• ‘The verdict: is blogging or tweeting
about research papers worth it?’ (http
://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/04/19/blog-tweeting-papers-worth-it/)
• Publicising the research made a big
impact on access and downloads:
‘The papers that were tweeted and blogged had
at least more than 11 times the number of
downloads than their sibling paper which was left
to its own devices in the institutional repository.’

53. Communicating & connecting
• Start commenting and join in discussions
on e.g. Mendeley, Academia.edu, etc.

55. Excluding
images,
screenshots
and logos
and/or unless
otherwise
indicated on
content
Thank you
http://openuct.uct.ac.za
@OpenExpl
• For more resources, please see the OpenUCT Delicious bookmarks tagged
‘onlinepresence’: http://www.delicious.com/openuct/onlinepresence
• All screenshots used purely for illustrative purposes
• Some slides used and/or adapted from: Laura Czerniewicz’s presentation ‘Academics' online presence - assessing & shaping visibility 2012’:
http://www.slideshare.net/laura_Cz/academics-online-presence-assessing-shaping-visibility-2012,