Brian Kelly gave a presentation on open practices for researchers. Some of the key tips included being proactive in sharing research outputs through blogs, repositories and social media; monitoring the impact of different sharing approaches; developing an online network through Twitter and other platforms; and optimizing search engine visibility by providing links from highly ranked sites. The presentation emphasized the potential benefits of open engagement for increasing citations, downloads and the visibility of research.

1. Open Practices Beyond Open
Access
Presentation by Brian Kelly, UKOLN on 25 October 2012
for an Open Access Week event at the University of Exeter
1
Open Practices For Researchers
Presentation by Brian Kelly, Cetis on 19 June 2014 for the Research
and Innovation Conference 2014 at the University of Bolton

2. Open Practices For Researchers
Brian Kelly
Innovation Advocate
Cetis
University of Bolton
Bolton, UK
Contact Details
Email: bk4@bolton.ac.uk
Twitter: @briankelly
Blog: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
Cetis Web site: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/
Slides and further information available at
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/open-practices-for-researchers/
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Hashtag: #boltonunirandi14

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Idea from Cameron Neylon
Slide Concept by Cameron Neylon, who has waived all copyright and related or neighbouring rights. This slide only CCZero.
Social Media Icons adapted with permission from originals by Christopher Ross. Original images are available under GPL at:
http://www.thisismyurl.com/free-downloads/15-free-speech-bubble-icons-for-popular-websites 3

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About Me
Brian Kelly:
• Innovation Advocate, Cetis, University of Bolton
• Formerly UK Web Focus, UKOLN from 1996-2013
• Prolific blogger (1,300+ posts since Nov 2006)
• User of various social networking tools to support
professional activities
• Prolific speaker (~425 talks since 1996)
Research activities:
• Peer-reviewed papers in Web accessibility,
standards, web preservation, …
• Prizes: best research paper at ALT-C 2005 and best
communications paper at WAI 2010
• Invited speaker at library / Web conferences
Introduction
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Google Scholar Citations
See
http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user
=ixey0RkAAAAJ
5H-index=14 (according to Google Scholar Citations

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About This Talk
Open access:
• Benefits for researchers increasingly understood
This talk goes beyond open access:
• Open practices: sharing ideas on blogs
• Open engagement: the role of Twitter
• Dissemination: getting your research read
• Gathering the evidence: social media metrics /
altmetrics
• Making it work: identifying best practices
This talk provides tips for the connected researcher
Based on evidence gained from personal experiences
Introduction
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Top Tips for Jisc Inform
See
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/inform/inform35/InternationalOAWeek.html
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Introduction

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Who Cares?
Key stakeholders
The institution:
 Interests in institutional reputation; reporting,
auditing, …
The library:
 Manages the institutional repository
 Support service
Your department:
 Interests in departmental reputation
 Will seek to exploit its research activities
You, the researcher, with interests in:
 Your personal research reputation
 Developing your network
 Future funding and research opportunities
 Your long-term (research) career 8
Introduction

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Do You Want to ‘Market’ Your Research?
Do you seek to change the world through your research
or simply understand the world:
• Will you want to market your research?
• Will you want others to market your research?
• Will you have a detached view of your research?
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AboutYOu

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Why Open Access?
• cc
“Piled Higher and Deeper" by
Jorge Cham, www.phdcomics.com
Used with permission.
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LSE Impact blog post,
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/0
1/hefce-open-access-ref-gamechanger/
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LSE Impact Blog
1 April 2014

12. My Papers
My papers in
the University of
Bath repository
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Peer-reviewed
Abstract reviewed
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Project reports, …
Invited paper

13. Download statistics to 16 June 2014
Largest downloads for Brian Kelly
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Open Access Enhances Access
Content peer-reviewed (8 in first 15 most popular)
Abstract peer-reviewed (1)
Invited paper (3)
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14. Least Downloaded Papers
Will papers in
a repository
be seldom
seen?
What can be
learn from
approaches
taken for the
popular and
unpopular
papers?
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15 June 2014
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Learning from Mistakes
“Using Context to Support Effective Application of Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines”, Sloan, Kelly et al, JWE (5), 2006
• Submitted in July 2005
• Reviewers comments received in April 2006
• Published in JWE (Journal of Web Engineering) in December 2006
• PDF uploaded to repository in May 2012 (forgot about paper until
bulk uploads)
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Reflections on implications
given in “If a Tree Falls in a
Forest” post

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Learning From Success
“Library 2.0: balancing the risks and benefits to
maximise the dividends”
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• Most downloaded
individual paper in
repository 
• But only recent download
statistics available 
2014

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Evidence
How do we find out more?
• Peak statistics for repository
only available for 1 year
But:
Blog post about availability in Opus published on
11 August 2009
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Conclusion: Blog post responsible for initial popularity
Further investigation (of all my
paper downloads) confirms
large peak in August 2009

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Beyond the Edge Cases
Little-downloaded paper:
• Uploaded to repository 6 years after paper written
• I was not lead author
• Only PDF version uploaded
• Never blogged about; never tweeted
Most popular paper:
• Available in IR on launch of journal issue
• I was lead author
• Blog post published on day of launch
• Available in PDF, MS Word & HTML formats
• Link to paper subsequently tweeted & retweeted
• About Web 2.0, so likely to be read by bloggers
But what about the majority of papers?
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SEO or SMO
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation):
Helping Google find your papers through:
• Writing style, document structure, …
• In-bound links
SMO (Social Media Optimisation):
Helping other people find your papers through:
• Sharing on social media services
• Facilitating conversations
• Viral marketing
SMO: Good for new papers, but not relevant for popular
papers written from 2004-8
SEO: Document structure consistent. Difference appears
to be significant nos. of in-bound links 19

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Tip No. 1: Be Pro-active
Tip No. 1:
Be pro-active
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W4A 2012 Paper
Case study:
• Paper on “A challenge to web accessibility metrics
and guidelines: putting people and processes first”
given at W4A 2012 conference in Lyon in Apr 2012
Four co-authors agreed:
• To collaborate in raising awareness of paper and
presentation of the paper
How:
• Writing blog posts on or just before conference
• Participate on conference Twitter hashtag (e.g.
responding to comments while speaker is presenting)
Benefits:
• Reaching out to a wider audience based on our 4
professional networks 21

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Preparation
We:
• Uploaded paper to repository so URL was known
• Provided a link to the paper in speaker’s slides
• Uploaded holding slide to Slideshare so URL was
known (slides were finalised shortly before talk)
We could then:
• Prepare blog posts in advance
• Create short URLs for use in Twitter in advance
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Examples of approaches to follow

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Using the Institutional Repository
Paper uploaded to repository and blog post prepared 23

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Using Other Repositories
Opportunity
to promote
access to
slides as well
as the paper!
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http://www.slideshare.net/sloandr/w4a12-coopersloankellylewthwaite
Metadata provided
to give context to
slides

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Final slide provides (active) links to related work 25

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Tip No. 3: Monitor What Works
Tip No. 2:
Make it easier for your peers to access your
work by providing links in a timely fashion
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On 18 Apr 12:
• 1,391 views on
Slideshare
• Other slides had
3 and 311 views
By 15 Jun 14:
• 9,861 views on
Slideshare
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“Lies, damned lies &
statistics” – but my 3rd
most downloaded
paper in 2012
3 citations in July 2012 /
10 in June 2014

28. Topsy and Event Hashtag
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Buzz around event
hashtag captured
by Topsy

29. Topsy & Discussion About Slides
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Topsy recorded
discussions about slides

30. Topsy & Discussion About Paper
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Topsy recorded
discussions about paper
Note tweets
about event
(25) and slides
(20) more
popular than
paper (7)

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Tip No. 4: Don’t Forget the Links!
Tip No. 3:
Monitor what works for you (and understand
approaches which work for others)
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32. The IR
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Your papers should
be hosted on your
institutional repository

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LinkedIn
• Links to paper added to
• LinkedIn
• Academia.edu
• My pages on UKOLN Web site and blog
• …
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34. Academia.edu
Academia.edu
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Note:
• Links to papers in IR (not uploaded)
• Importance of tags
Academia.edu users may find
my papers here and LinkedIn
users in LinkedIn. Why would I
make it difficult for them?
Now 495 followers

35. The Institutional Web Site
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You may also wish to
provide links on your
institutional Web site
Note direct links to paper
in various formats

36. The Blog
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If you have a blog you
can provide links to
your papers (again to
all formats)

37. Commentable Pages on Blog
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Recent development:
Commentable pages for
papers with links to key
resources (IR & publisher’s
copy, metrics, citations, …)Now 112

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Tip No. 5: Don’t Forget the Google
Juice!
Tip No. 4:
Don’t forget the Google juice!
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Importance of Google
Context:
• Between 50-80% of traffic to IRs are from Google
(may be higher if direct links to PDFs not recorded by
Google Analytics)
What provides ‘Google juice’:
• On-page SEO techniques
(structure, writing style, …)
• Links to pages, especially
from highly-ranking sites
What’s different about IRs?
• Same page structure
• Therefore importance of links
to repository
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Importance of Google
Context:
• Between 50-80% of traffic to IRs are from Google
(may be higher if direct links to PDFs not recorded by
Google Analytics)
What provides ‘Google juice’:
• On-page SEO techniques
(structure, writing style, …)
• Links to pages, especially
from highly-ranking sites
What’s different about IRs?
• Same page structure
• Therefore importance of links
to repository
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What Delivers Google Juice?
Survey of SEO ranking of 24 Russell
Group IRs carried out in August
2012.
Findings:
• Google, YouTube, Blogspot,
Wikipedia and Microsoft are
highest ranking domains with
links to IRs
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• Blogspot.com & WordPress.com have
significantly larger number of links to IRs
• Links from institutional domain (e.g. locally-
hosted blogs) provide little Google juice!
Blogspot.com
Wordpress.com

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UK Web
Focus
blog has a
rotating
Featured
Paper link
UK Web
Focus has
timely
blog posts
about
papers
UK Web Focus has links to all papers

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Tip No. 7: Develop Your Network
Tip No. 5:
Develop your network
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“It’s About Nodes and Connections”
Cameron Neylon keynote at OR 2012:
“Networks qualitatively change our
capacity”
• With only 20% of a community connected only
limited interaction can take place
• This increases drastically as numbers of
connected nodes grows
Examples:
• Phone networks (no use with only 1 user!)
• Tweeting at confereces
• Galaxy Zoo
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“Filters block. Filters cause
friction”
Need for client-side, not
supply-side filters.

45. Tweetchat
Tweetchats:
• Discussions on Twitter
• Specific topic covered
at specified time
• Use hashtags e.g.
#PhDchat, #ECRchat
Summary at
Survey findings:
“give a community &
shared space to
explore ideas”
“regular opportunity to
network with a wide
range of people I
wouldn’t otherwise
meet”
“have very interesting
and thought-provoking
discussions/debate”
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Too Much Information?
Let’s skip to the conclusions!
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Tip No. 7: Develop Your Network
Tip No. 6:
You can’t ignore Google
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Google Scholar
• Google Scholar is better!
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Google Scholar
• Google Scholar is better!
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Google Scholar
• You should claim your profile while your institutional
email address is valid.
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Google Scholar
• You can also receive alerts of new citations
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Tip No. 7: Develop Your Network
Tip No. 7:
Understand the potential benefits of Twitter
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Twitter
• You can’t ignore Twitter!
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Twitter Works For Professionals
Mellisa Terras’ blog
post on how Twitter
increases
downloads for peer-
reviewed papers
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Other potential areas for such use of Twitter
• Promoting your project outputs
• Promoting events
• …

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Understanding Twitter
Applications such as
SocialBro provide an
understanding of how Twitter
is being used
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• Most tweet daily
• Most follow >100
• Most tweet <=5 times
1329

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Using Twitter (For The Sceptic)
Not a natural Twitterer, but see benefits?
• Have an avatar (portrait, animal, hobby)
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Grow your community (cf the conversations you miss)
• Participate in hashtagged events so like-minded people
see you exist
• Share links to resources you care about (your stuff;
stuff you’re reading)
• Favourite tweets (so others can see you’ve done so and
maybe then follow you)

57. Understand Twitter Interactions
An @ message (can be
delivered by SMS)
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New followers: which
should I follow back?
The tweets which have
been retweeted (RTd)
Tweets which have been
favourited (bookmarked)

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Health Warning!
Suggestions given can help to enhance the
visibility of one’s research.
Highly visible and popular research is not
necessarily an indication of quality!
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Conclusions
1. Be pro-active
2. Make it easier for your peers to access your work by
providing links in a timely fashion
3. Monitor what works for you
4. Don’t forget the Google juice
5. Develop your network
6. You can’t ignore Google
7. Understand the potential benefits of Twitter
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60. Cartoon
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Any Questions?

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Questions?
Any questions, comments, …?
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This presentation, “Open Practices For Researchers” by Brian Kelly, Cetis
is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence
Note the licence covers most of the text in this presentation. Quotations may
have other licence conditions.
Images may have other licence conditions. Where possible links are
provided to the source of images so that licence conditions can be found.
62
Slides and further information available at
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/open-practices-for-researchers/
Licence and Additional Resources