The benefits of having a web presence as an early career researcher

If someone wanted to get in touch with you about your research, how would they contact you? This is a useful thought experiment I would suggest all researchers consider. Once you’ve had a think, try googling your own name. Chances are there will be lots of results that vary in relevance – and if you have a common name, it’ll be even harder to find something relevant. If it’s hard, or even difficult, to contact you, you risk missing out on opportunities that might help you raise your research profile. That’s why I always recommend that researchers have an online presence.

A web presence helps you highlight and promote your work, and by sharing insights on networks such as LinkedIn or Twitter, you can raise awareness of your research and your expertise. You can find great ideas on how to do this in my previous Campus article, “How to be proactive when amplifying research papers”. By having a visible presence online, with contact details, you make it easier for opportunities to come your way.

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If your contact details can be easily found, you may find that you’re more likely to receive media requests related to your research. For example, since publishing a journal article in Frontiers in Psychology and several follow-up articles in The Conversation, I’ve received emails inviting me to talk about my research on numerous radio stations and to provide expert comments for magazine articles. These opportunities have landed in my inbox at least partly because I’m easily contactable online and because my areas of expertise are clear.

Furthermore, if you’re an early career researcher, you might be interested in getting more involved with academic peer review. Journal editors already have a difficult job finding reviewers with the appropriate expertise and availability, and while they might be aware of your relevant expertise, if they can’t easily find a contact address for you, they might move on to someone else.

And all of the above doesn’t even take into consideration the fact that some of my favourite emails and messages have come from members of the public. These are people who have heard about my research in the media and wanted to share their thoughts and ideas with me. Some of them have just been lovely messages sharing a thank you for doing research in these areas – and that’s a really nice way of thinking about the impact of your work beyond a set of metrics.

How to create your web presence

There are several ways to create a web presence for yourself and your work, and the amount of time and effort they’ll require varies. This means you can think about which options work best for you.

University website

One of the easiest ways to start building an online presence is to find out whether your university has external-facing staff directories or staff pages. If it does, it’s worth double-checking that your information is up to date. You don’t necessarily need to go into too much detail here, but making sure that the correct email address is listed alongside a brief summary of your work and/or research areas is a great place to start.

Twitter

I know social media accounts aren’t for everyone, and I don’t believe that academics have to have social accounts such as Twitter, but it can be beneficial. Whether it’s a personal Twitter account (even if it’s used only for work purposes) or an account for your research lab, it can be a great place to share updates related to your work. Crucially, though, it also provides the opportunity for other researchers to tag your account while talking about relevant opportunities. Being tagged by other users can also help direct more people towards the work you’ve been doing. Utilising your Twitter bio to include a few relevant keywords can really aid discoverability.

LinkedIn

A well-crafted LinkedIn profile can require a bit more effort than a Twitter account, but even having a simple profile that briefly mentions your research topic and recent findings can make it much easier for interested people to get in contact with you. You might find it helpful to include your institutional email address on your LinkedIn profile, thus allowing people to directly message you with any relevant opportunities.

Personal website

This is the option that can take the most time and effort, but it definitely doesn’t require as much technical knowledge as you might think. Google Sites and Wix both have simple, free templates that will allow you to make a basic page featuring your name and email address and information about your research and publications. Creating a personal website takes a bit of time at first; however, the time commitment shrinks greatly over time as you will only need to update it as required. Once you’ve got your website set up, you can also link to it on your Twitter or LinkedIn account.

Final advice

It’s well worth thinking about the terms someone might use to try to find a way to contact you. My research has looked at the cognitive effects of martial arts practice, so I know that “Ashleigh Johnstone martial arts” could be a Google search someone would use if they wanted to find me. This means I keep those words in my Twitter bio, LinkedIn profile and on my website. This is so that these pages can be found on Google easily with this search.

Regardless of which route you go down to improve your discoverability, I’d recommend giving it a go. After all, you never know what kind of opportunities might come your way.

Ashleigh Johnstone is a lecturer in psychology at Arden University, UK.

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