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Publishing strategy

A good publishing strategy can increase the findability, accessibility and visibility of your work. Here you can find tips and guidance.

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Even if work is of high quality, it will not be used unless others can find and access it. Having a publishing strategy for making your work findable, accessible and visible can help dissemination and communication of your research.

A publishing strategy encompasses the choices you make during the publication process as well as what you do post-publication. During publication this includes, for example, choosing the right journal and using the same terminology as your audience. After publication it might include updating your publication record, archiving your work, and communicating in social & traditional media.

Below you find some advice for your publishing strategy, aimed at increasing the findability, accessibility and visbility of your work.  

Findability

To increase the findability of your work you should think about your desired audience: who are they, what are they interested in knowing, and how do they search?

While writing: Choose titles and keywords carefully

Title, abstract and keywords can be used to attract the attention of a possible audience. They also affect whether your publications will be in the search results when others do a literature search in abstract databases and library catalogues. Ask yourself:  

  • What readership do I want to reach? 
  • What databases do they use to find literature? 
  • What terminology are they most likely to know and use when searching? 

Include relevant terminology in the abstract and keywords of your publication. It is also an advantage if key terms are included in the title; and bear in mind that starting a title with punctuation (e.g. #) or metaphors can affect its appearance in searches.

While publishing: Choose the right journal/publisher

There are many aspects to think about when considering where to publish. Important criteria include whether there is a peer-review process, if the journal/publisher is ranked in the Norwegian Scientific Index, and whether or not the journal/publisher allows open publishing or archiving. Other relevant factors include:

  • What is the subject area of the journal/publisher?
  • Is it aimed at the audience you want to reach? Do your peers publish there?
  • Do you yourself read content from this journal/publisher?
  • Is the journal indexed in relevant databases for your subject?

You can see more advice on where to publish from PhD on Track here.

Make yourself findable

The guidance above is for improving findability of a piece of work - but could someone easily find you, what you are currently working on, and an updated publication list? Here, your online presence is important. Your online identity can be made up of many elements – both private and academic. These range from employee pages to academic profiles to social media. Some general tips for maintaining your presence are:

  • Take control and keep it up to date: Take control over your online identity, ensuring that the information about you and your research is correct. Update your research interests to reflect your current projects/applications and position. Avoid having outdated or contradictory profiles.
  • Make sure you are recognisable: When publishing, use the same name variant if possible (e.g. consistent use of middle names). Even better - create an author ID to ensure that you can’t be confused with other authors, and provide it when you publish. There are many services offering profiles and author IDs - we recommend ORCiD. Find guidance and read more about your options in the visibility section on this page.

Accessibility

Your can make it easier for others to access and re-use your research by engaging with open science.

Publish open access

Open science is beneficial for research and researchers[1]. There are several ways to publish openly, such as publishing with OA journals/publishers, publishing in hydbrid journals via the library publishing agreements, or by self-archiving your work in UiBs repository, BORA. See more details in our open access guidance here.

When choosing a publishing channel, you should check:

Make other outputs accessible

Your data can be made accessible by ensuring good documentation, and depositing it in a repository (subject repositories or UiB Open Research Data). The library webpages provide detailed guidance about data management plans and FAIR and open research data.

You can also deposit code, conference presentations, and other works to make them accessible. Browse our "Open Science" menu at the top of this page.

Visibility

This section covers how to use online profiles to ensure you and your work are visible. Online platforms are one way to make sure that when people search for you or your work, they find what they need to.

The Communication department or a local communications adviser can provide guidance about social media and other ways to increase visibility, for example through media contact; see communications support services at UiB here.

1. The first step: Decide what you want

Not everyone wants to spend time maintaining profiles and interacting online. But having a good, basic presence does not have to be time-consuming! We recommend that everyone should get an ORCiD profile and update their UiB profile page every few months. Read about these below.

If you want to go futher, consider having additional profiles on other platforms or academic social media. If you interested in engaging in discussion, maybe academic twitter or academic blogging are for you?

2. Regularly update your UiB profile page

All employees at UiB have their own profile page. This should be maintained, as when people google you this is likely to be in the top results!

  • It's good practice to write a short research statement so it’s easy for others to see what you are working on - preferably one that is also clear to researchers in other fields, students or journalists. 
  • You can add extra or custom tabs to showcase your various activities or achievements.
  • The profile also includes publication list which is automatically updated from Cristin. You can add publications from outside Norway manually, or add a link to the academic profiles mentioned below.

You can read more about your profile page in the employee pages and in UiBs brand guide.

3. Academic profiles and IDs

Academic profiles are a place online to show what you do and have achieved. Check our guide, "Profiles and Publishing statistics", for advice on choosing and updating a profile. Have a profile has two main advantages:

  • Author ambiguity: ORCID, Publons and Scopus Author IDs provide a unique ID that distinguishes you from any other researchers - despite name changes or similiarities. We recommend that all researchers get an ORCID as it is a non-profit organisation, and is used by with many funders and publishers. While publishing, you can include your ORCID with your submission.
  • Profiling your activities: You can claim/create an author profile on ORCID, Google Scholar, Publons or Scopus. These can be used to display your publications, interests and affiliation; some also include peer-review activity, editorial activity, other output types (e.g. open datasets) and a research statement. Some display your citations and h-index.

Academic social networks

Prominent academic social network sites include ResearchGate and Academia.edu. These are not a replacement for an academic profile/ID (they do not have the ID function), but are useful if you wish to:

  • make publications and datasets more visible
  • follow other researchers or projects (and be followed)
  • engage in discussions and write messages

Note about sharing of work on social media: There can be stricter rules around sharing your work on academic social networking sites  than an institutional repository. In addition, uploading your work to social media may not fill "open access" criteria in the same way as sharing it in an institutional repository. We recommend using one of the three established open access routes to make your work open, and then use social media sharing of links/documents as supplement for visibility.