Life after publication: promote your work for maximum impact

If you’ve just finalised a new publication, you’re probably feeling rather pleased with yourself. There’s no doubt that getting published is a terrific achievement and all credit to you. But if you think that it’s time to put your feet up, the truth is that your work is far from over. You see, although your new paper is undoubtedly a cracking read, it’s only one of more than five million articles published this year. To ensure that your output doesn’t get lost in the sea of new literature, it’s time to think about some ways you can ensure your research stands out.

The good news is that there are many ways in which you can promote your work to get maximum impact. Here are our top tips on how to get the most out of your article.

Sharing does a lot of the heavy lifting

When it comes to making a splash with your work, sharing is your friend. Happily, most publishers have well-developed resources and infrastructure that you can put to work. Many, for example, have a system of article shares (Wiley), ePrints (Taylor & Francis), share links (Elsevier), sharing links (Springer Nature) or similar, which allow you to give access to your networks quickly and easily. Admittedly, the rules and policies around sharing different versions can get complicated, so make use of tools such as How can I share it as well as checking the relevant publisher’s guidelines, such as this helpful summary from Taylor & Francis.

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When you have your ePrint or share link, harness the power of social media to broadcast your work and generate some buzz. Make sure to tag relevant topics, institutions, societies, events and research groups – as well as the publisher – to maximise visibility. Be responsive to comments and questions. To get the most out of your social media activities, consider brushing up on your digital media skills with free resources such as this neat toolkit from Sage or this module from Elsevier’s Researcher Academy. While you’re at it, make sure your CV is up to date, ditto any online profiles (remember to use ORCID to ensure you get credit), institutional pages, blogs and so on.

Promote yourself and your work to get noticed

This is good advice for any stage of career building, of course, but when you have a shiny new article out, do all you can to ensure it’s being talked about. For example, be alert to opportunities to present your work at conferences, whether via a presentation or a poster session. Or why not see if you can deliver a guest lecture or seminar at another institution? Engage with your audiences and be responsive to questions and networking possibilities – they might lay the groundwork for future collaborations, after all.

There are other, simple things you can do to push your article: consider, for example, putting a (sharing) link to the article in your email signature or see if you can highlight it on your departmental website. If it’s ground-breaking stuff, why not have a chat with your institution’s press office or the publisher (or both) to see if you can get a press release out?

Open up your research for maximum accessibility

Sharing and promoting are great ways to get people reading what you’ve written, but it’s also important to do all you can to open up your work to the broadest possible audience. There are two aspects to this: access and content. For the former, have you considered making your work open access? Most publishers have OA options and, even if you don’t have funding for an article publication charge for “gold” OA, you might be able to take advantage of “green” OA to open up your article after an embargo period.

The second aspect concerns making the research itself comprehensible to different audiences. If you can explain what you’ve done and why it’s important to the greatest number of people, that will pay dividends. There are many options here – from recording a video abstract for your article to preparing an infographic or a visual abstract. Another great way to broaden the appeal of your article is to draft a lay summary. This is a “plain English” summary of the work, written in such a way that non-specialists can understand what it’s all about. This sort of thing can help news outlets, as well as the general public, to understand and engage with academic work, again giving you and your work more exposure.

Go the extra mile

The precise resources and avenues you choose will be specific to you and your context, but it’s important to pay attention to the post-publication part of your journey just as you took care to shepherd your article through peer review. Spending a little more time and effort on helping people to find, understand and engage with your work is a great way of getting the most out of the publishing experience. We hope the above tips help you to make your article stand out!

Christopher Tancock is editor-in-chief of Elsevier’s Editors’, Authors’ and Reviewers’ Updates and works on related communications projects.

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Picture this: a stimulating way of opening up your research to new audiences

Sharing your work infographic by Taylor and Francis

How to get your research published… …and then noticed, a 2020 guide by Elsevier

How to promote your research for maximum impact, a video guide by Elsevier