by Lorie Kloda
Assessment Librarian, McGill University
As a researcher-practitioner, I spend a significant amount of time on scholarship – grant applications, research, journal editing, conference presentations and posters, journal articles, and everything else that comes with the territory. Like many people, I often consider the end result of this process to be the publication or presentation. And that’s true: the product of scholarship is typically a written report or verbal presentation delivered to an intended audience for consumption. But it’s not the last step in the cycle of scholarly communication. I’m not talking about other researchers referencing my work in their own publications (which – hopefully – comes much later), I’m talking about the promotion that comes post-publication that I have to do myself.
It’s no fun to have a paper published in a journal only to sit and wait for colleagues and peers to notice it. Over the years, I’ve developed a checklist of channels or venues in which to track and promote my scholarship. Some of these are institutional requirements, and I choose to tackle them immediately rather than update them all at once at the end of the year or before an important point in my career. Some of the items on the checklist are for promotional purposes, and vary depending on the accomplishment and who I think might be interested. Routinizing the documentation and promotion of my scholarship makes the process a little less of a chore, and ensures that I don’t accidentally forget something important.
What follows is a checklist, not meant to be exhaustive, of places to document and promote one’s scholarship. I have grouped the various options into categories that make sense to me, and included possible channels or venues that may be appropriate. I certainly don’t do all of these things every time I give a conference presentation or publish an article, although some of the items on the list are less optional than others. The items on the checklist are intended for traditional article or book publications, but can be adapted for presentations, workshops, grants awarded, or other achievements.
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1. Dossiers and curriculum vitae (cv)
- Academic cv
- Annual report or performance review (working copy)
- Reappointment / tenure / promotion dossier (working copy)
- Canadian Common cv
2. Repositories:
Make sure to check with your co-authors and author-publisher agreements before depositing a publication or presentation in an open access repository.
- Subject repository (E-LiS)
- Institutional repository
3. Professional Networking Websites:
- Academia.edu
- ResearchGate
- Impact Story
- Slideshare (for a presentation)
- Google Scholar profile page
- University profile page
- University/ department list of publications
- Research groups, centres, and institutes (for their newsletters)
4. Citation Managers:
5. Communications & Social Media:
Create a short URL (using Bit.ly or similar) to track clicks and use the altmetric bookmarklet to track social media engagement.
- Google+
Contact your communications officer at the institution or department level to share the news. They may be able to help you promote your work.
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Having your article published is a cause for celebration! Taking an hour to go through a checklist can be a rewarding way to acknowledge it. For me, it is an enjoyable ritual to update my cv and let my colleagues know. What’s the first thing you do after getting published? What would you add to the post-publication checklist?
This article gives the views of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of the Centre for Evidence Based Library and Information Practice or the University Library, University of Saskatchewan.