Tell Your Story - Impact & Engagement: Promote your Research

Science communication is a hot topic these days, and it can be defined generally as the communication of scientific research, knowledge, and ideas to the general public through various information channels, such as social media, mainstream news media, blogs, podcasts, radio, documentaries, and so on. Although science implies only fields in the hard science disciplines, it can also include disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.

• Professional Websites
  • Showcase your visual art, musical works, your CV, and/or your scholarly works in a fashionable and visually appealing way.
  • Example of an academic's professional website
  • Webpost: How to Choose the Best Website Builder in 2018 (Compared)
  • Other options: about.me, Squarespace
• Kudos
  • “Maximizing dissemination and engaging readers: The other 50% of an author’s day: A case study,” T. Green, 2019
    • This article explains how to best use the Kudos platform to improve discovery of your scholarly publications, reach large and more diverse audiences (as well as the public) outside of your own field, how usage statistics across multiple platforms can be misinforming and even misleading, and the best tips for dissemination and promotion channels to boost the downloads of your publications. 
  • Promote your work and provide nontechnical titles and summaries of your research to broaden your readership
  • Ability to share your works via other platforms (LinkedIn, Twitter, emails, etc.) directly from Kudos
  • Evidence suggests that promoting work on Kudos increases the rate of downloads by 23%
    • Kudos publication pages tend to get picked up more frequently on search engines after sharing, leading to more page views and downloads on the publisher's article page.
  • Provides insightful usage data to help you see when and which channels provide the most traction for promotion
  • Provides citation-based metrics from CrossRef
  • Provides altmetrics from Altmetric.com

Host a Podcast

• Web Post: 8 Best Podcast Hosting Platforms 2018
• Requires a higher lever of time-commitment
• Appropriate for those dedicated to communicating their research to the public & a lay audience

Resources for Effective Science Communication

• July 2019 ICTAS (Institute for Critical Technologies & Applied Sciences) Workshop Slides: Communicating Research Online Workshop Series 
• Article on Virginia Tech Communicating Science course
• Am I Making Myself Clear?: A Scientist's Guide to Talking to the Public, by Cornelia Dean, 2009
• Virginia Tech's Center for Communicating Science

Rachel Miles

Research Impact Librarian

Liaison to the Psychology Department
& the School of Neuroscience

Rachel is currently away on parental leave and will return on January 31. For immediate assistance, please contact researchservices@vt.edu.

Download this free e-book for ideas on expanding your online presence and impact as a researcher or scholar.