Researcher Profiles, Identifiers and Engagement

Managing your digital identity takes time, so be strategic:

• To build effective networks, focus on keeping the tools that you current and active. If used wisely, the tools in this Library Guide can add value to your research.
• Aim for quality interactions rather being distracted by how many tools you have signed up to or your number of connections/followers.
• Select tools that will help to advance your current research priorities and projects. Think also about the tools being used in your discipline and by your target audience. Which will help to build your reputation, your career and your network?
• Enable others to easily learn about your research, research outputs, academic achievements and the tools you use to showcase your work.
• In deciding whether to use a particular tool, consider how you will use it. Before you sign up, check out how people you know or others in your area of research are using it.
• Manage how you receive notifications e.g. in your email and frequency.
• Be selective about who you connect with. Only accept invitations from people you genuinely know, can confidently verify and you would like to have in your network.

Only share information that you are legally allowed to share. Be sure that you own the copyright of the material you want to share, or that the work grants the rights for sharing e.g. as a Creative Commons licence. We have more information on the JCU Copyright page. If you are still not sure, check with your Liaison Librarian. 

For your publications, options for sharing will depend on the conditions that you agreed to in the copyright agreement that you signed with the publisher. For more information, see the Understanding Publishers tab of the Publishing Academic Research LibGuide.

If you have signed a confidentiality or a community participation agreement, there might be additional restrictions on how you may share your work. See the links below for more information.

As with any information, you have a moral obligation to attribute the creator of a work or source of an idea i.e. you must not plagiarise the work of others. This applies to online communication, even if it is informal, in the same way as writing an academic journal article.

The information you share online will create an impression about you and your research. Be proactive in crafting the profile that you want the world to see. Use the tools in this Library Guide to assist with disseminate your research achievements, amplifying the usual ways that you communicate your research.

• For your research profiles and identifiers, don't share so much detail that your career highlights get lost in the detail.
• For social engagement tools, create awareness about your research. Use the tools to create communities of interest, and build connections or networks.

Only share the information that you want the world to know about, balancing the level of personal and professional content. Once you have shared information online, it is unlikely that you will be able to retract it, so remember to "think before you click". As a rule, only share what you would like to be widely disseminated.

For the tools that you sign up to, consider how the data can be used by that service. This information will be explained in the terms and conditions of the site.

Altmetrics are alternative metrics - alternative to traditional citation metrics. In addition to citations, altmetrics include the number of times a work has been viewed, discussed, saved or recommended.

Using the social engagement tools will build the altmetric score for your publications and other research outputs. The most reliable way for your work to be picked up by altmetric aggregating tools is to mention the DOI for your research output.

Altmetric scores give an indication of the interest in your research and how widely it has been disseminated. This can be used as additional, qualitative evidence for measuring research performance. Altmetrics are not yet robust enough to use as a quantitative benchmarking tool.

No citation or altmetrics tracking tool will capture all of the activity for your research. Altmetric tools also vary in sources they use to track activity. This means that you should always state the source of any metrics you use as evidence of research performance.

More information: