Managing your researcher profiles
Managing your researcher profiles will enable you to effectively track engagement with your research outputs, and enable you to benchmark your performance against other researchers.
Once you have decided which profiles are suitable, and created and added information to those profiles, there are a few considerations to keep in mind.
Time commitment
Maintain your profiles regularly to ensure they are accurate, current and complete.
Risk management
Privacy – only share information you are happy for others to see.
Copyright and publishing agreements – check that you only share information that you can legally disclose to others.
Security – review the user agreement of each profile tool so that you know who accesses your data, how it is stored and what you can control.
Measuring impact
Citation metrics provided by the following researcher profiles are one way of measuring impact:
- Scopus Author ID
- Web of Science Researcher Profile
- Google Scholar Profile
These citation tools are limited as no single tool can provide a comprehensive measurement of research publication impact. They only gather metrics on the publications that they index. Citation counts should be used with other qualitative measures. Altmetrics (alternative metrics) provide insights into what is being said about research in non-scholarly forums (e.g. social media). Read more on the Altmetrics library guide.
Other key profile tools
The module has addressed the most common researcher profiles: ORCID, Scopus Author ID, Web of Science Researcher Profile and Google Scholar Profile.
You might consider other profiles tools:
- University profiles: RMIT staff profiles
- Social media: Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs
- Communities: Academia.edu, ResearchGate
- Dissemination: RMIT Research Repository, The Conversation, your email signature
There is much to consider when using social media. Engaging with social media enables you to promote and track your research to a wider audience. The Social Media for Researchers library guide introduces platforms and provides tips to maximise social media usage. Relevant university policies and guidelines, as well as copyright information are included.
Which researcher profiles will you use?
There are many considerations when deciding which researcher profiles will benefit you. Before creating any researcher profiles, consider:
- What is the purpose of the researcher profile and does it suit you?
- Which profiles are the most relevant for your research discipline?
- How many profiles can you regularly maintain?
