Make your research visible

Many databases and search engines use the title, abstract and keywords to determine relevance of your work to a search. The title should balance searchable terms and attention: Key terms in the title can improve the ranking of the publication in search results, while special characters (such as #) and metaphors can reduce this. The abstract is a good place to include the relevant terms. Choose keywords strategically and use the opportunity to include relevant terminology, spell out abbreviations, or add synonyms.

It is worth thinking carefully about where you publish, both to reach the readers you want and to avoid disreputable actors.

What matters most to you now? Prestige, fast publication, design, open access and peer review, cost, or something else? For example, you can get results out quickly by publishing a preprint, while having published peer-reviewed articles in prestigious journals looks good on your record.

Which phase of your career or project you are in can affect what you emphasise when choosing a channel. The scholarly norms in your field and your motivation for publishing are important.

Tips for assessing a channel:

• Target audience and readership
• The quality and speed of peer review
• Indexing in Web of Science, Scopus and subject-specific databases
• Open access policy (but remember that open archiving of an article is always possible through UiB's rights retention scheme)
• Level placement in the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers
• Reputation/status

More advice is available at PhD on Track – Where to publish?

Open articles are downloaded and cited more often than articles behind a paywall. UiB's publishing agreements, the open access publication fund and the rights retention scheme give you opportunities to publish openly. See What is open access?

By preregistering a project or publishing a preprint or a dataset, you can make your work and preliminary results visible, and perhaps receive feedback you can benefit from along the way.

Even after publication, there are steps you can take to improve discoverability:

• Add new publications, datasets and activities to your researcher profiles.
• Make sure that links between works are in place. For example, include a data availability statement in the article, or update the dataset with a reference to the article or preprint where it has been used.
• Share and discuss your work in academic or social networks, online or in person.

Researcher profiles make it easy for others to see what you work on and to find your work. Some can also be used to keep track of and showcase activities that are not visible through publishing, such as lectures, supervision and professional or leadership activities/appointed roles. 

Examples of such profiles include your UiB employee page, NVA, and international researcher profiles such as ORCID, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Our guide, Profiles and Publishing statistics, gives practical advice on choosing, creating, and maintaining researcher profiles.

ORCID is a researcher profile, but also a unique 16-digit identifier that follows you throughout your career. It distinguishes you from other researchers with the same name and gathers your publications, datasets, conference papers, peer reviews and more in one profile.

The Research Council of Norway, the EU and many journals require ORCID. UiB recommends that all researchers register an ORCID. Our guide, Profiles and Publishing statistics, shows step-by-step how to set up ORCID, import your outputs and contributions, and adjust the settings.

All UiB employees have an employee page, which appears high in the results when someone searches for your name in search engines. An up-to-date profile with good descriptions of what matters to you, about you (Publications? Projects? Outreach? Teaching?), along with links to ORCID and other profiles, makes you visible to collaborators and the media. To update your page, see UiB's web manual.

Academic staff also have a profile in NVA, which can be used for better visibility and to keep track of your own activities. You must register scholarly publications in NVA, and some publication types also have an archiving requirement. Read more about NVA.

• Set aside time every three to six months to maintain your profiles. Your affiliation should be correct, and the description of your research interests, publications and projects should be up to date.
• Search for yourself: what comes up? Do you find profiles with outdated or incorrect information? Consider which profiles are worth spending time on, and deactivate the others.
• Many services, such as Web of Science and Scopus, build automatic researcher profiles. You can gain access to edit these profiles by claiming them.
• Attend one of our courses if you would like advice - check the library calendar or contact Bibliometric services.

Academic social networks (for example ResearchGate and Academia.edu) can be useful for showcasing your own projects and results, following those of others, and interacting with other researchers. They have different disciplinary profiles, and some offer paid (additional) services.

These profiles cannot replace ORCID and should be considered a supplement - they are not as good at keeping an overview of all your works, and do not provide an author ID.

Be aware that there may be limits on what you can legally upload to services such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu. If you are in doubt, check the licence on your work, or link to a version in an open archive.

• Bluesky and Mastodon have growing research communities
• LinkedIn is used for professional networking and recruitment

Consistent naming, a link to your ORCID/UiB page and regular sharing of open research give lasting visibility. The Communication Division or your local communication adviser can give advice on social media and other ways to increase visibility. See communication support services here.

Research communication in national and international media is a strong sign of social relevance.

The Communication Division has expertise in strategic communication, advice, journalism, media handling, public contact, social media, video, photography, web and graphic design. See communication support services here.