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How to share and promote your research

How to Share and Promote your Research

Sharing and actively promoting your research will lead to more people reading it and hopefully, more people citing it in their own papers. You can connect your research with people outside of academia, too, increasing its impact and connecting with more readers in industry, in the media, and around the world. See  also our Researcher academic networking sites page.

  • Academic staff can make sure it's on City Research Online. Library staff check all submissions for copyright and licensing issues, so once it's made live, you know you have a shareable version that meets HEFCE Open Access requirements. Open access means that your research can be read by anyone, unlike most published versions of articles which are behind paywalls.
  • Update your professional profiles to include your article. Updating CRO means that Academic Experts profiles are updated too. You can also add your most recent research to LinkedIn and to profiles on academic networking and research sharing sites.
  • Share, promote and discuss (legally shareable) copies to research sharing sites. These include Academia.edu, ResearchGate and Mendeley. Please see below for our guidelines on making sure you are copyright and licensing compliant.
  • Share links to your research on your own social media accounts. Twitter and Facebook are popular choices. Link to the copy on City Research Online so there's no paywall to get through and everyone can read your work. You can use institutional accounts too, for instance by sharing with a Twitter account for your department or using the hashtag for a course you teach on. See our Social Media Guide for more information.
  • Talk about it on relevant JISCMail lists. Email lists are still a popular tool for discussion and research dissemination. Lists are also a great way to keep up to date in your research area.
  • Tell your colleagues Peers within City, University of London and any collaborative partners you have will be interested in your articles.
  • Consider blogging or vlogging about your research. You can use posts or videos to highlight key takeaways and give people reasons why they should read your work. This can also help you to explain it to a lay audience who might be interested but are not used to reading academic articles.
  • Share your work with the world outside academia. The Press Office team can advise you.

Conferences, Workshops and Symposia

  • Conferences are excellent venues for meeting research colleagues from around the world. The networking at the conferences can provide valuable feedback for your research and help you find opportunities for collaboration. Hearing other peopler's work and exploring their posters can inspire you and connect you to the wider world of your subject.
  • Posters tend to be the first published efforts of a researcher and getting a poster in a conference is a great experience for a PhD candidate.
  • Papers given at conferences are often the next step. They usually take the form of an oral presentation. You may be required to submit an abstract for the conference, or in some cases a full paper.
  • Conference proceedings are often published afterwards and contain all the papers or particular highlights. You may be invited or required to submit a full paper for publication in the conference proceedings.
  • There is also a new and growing arena of subject-specific social media where online conferences are established. Once you have identified an interesting conference, sign up to receive notifications on abstract submissions and registration deadlines.
  • Workshops, symposia and researcher development days are other events that you can use to learn new skills and network, as well as promote any recent research you have done.
  • Internal conferences events are be a good opportunity to meet other researchers within your institution and discuss your research.

Creating Effective Posters for Conferences

An effective poster can attract unexpected contacts and connections, promote your profile and research, and engage others in debate. You may be available to present your poster and answer questions about your research, but if you are not there it can still be effective:

  • Let images illustrate your points - do not overload the poster with text
  • Remember that people will be reading from a few metres away, so keep text large and clear
  • Consider your audience and the conference themes, and choose a key message to design your poster around
  • Keep tables, data and graphs as simple as possible
  • Have handouts with key points available to take away
  • Make sure your contact details, including social media, are clearly visible

Using images

It is important to work within copyright rules. Take a look at our guide on finding images and understanding the different types of copyright. Don't forget to credit your images - just as you would credit any quotations or ideas in your research papers.  Using your own images is a great way to ensure you stay within copyright rules.

You can also read our full guide to copyright.

Resources

Guidelines for authors sharing research publications

Library Services has created some guidelines in order to help City authors decide what they can share/re-post/re-publish, such as early drafts of articles, published articles, items in conference proceedings, book chapters, etc.

  • Publishers’ Open Access and Archiving policies: it is vital to be aware of these, both for journal articles and book chapters. For journals, in the majority of cases this can be checked using the online resource Sherpa/Romeo. These will govern how publications may be made available by the author, and if a journal article, which version should be used if it has already been published. Careful selection of a journal may be necessary if you want to be able to share your articles easily.
  • Publishers’ contracts: these must be checked to see what is permitted in terms of re-use or republication. This may be a traditional paper contract, or the author (lead author if there are multiple authors) may have been asked to agree to contractual terms using an online form, the link to which would have been sent by the publisher in an email.
  • Permission from the publisher: this may be necessary to re-post or re-publish, depending on the licence it is published under, or made available under on CRO. If a paper is re-posted or republished, the place of first publication must be given as a citation.
  • Third party copyright: this will need permission to re-post or republish; the permission originally obtained only covers the original publication in the journal. (See also article 39 of the REF 2021 HEFCE policy, relating to third party copyright and Open Access.)
  • Online sites such as Academia.edu, Researchgate and SSRN: please note that these are not managed in the same way that an institutional repository such as CRO is, which means that embargos, copyright compliance, and other details are not checked (although SSRN does check that the paper is a part of the scholarly discourse in its subject area). They are also not compliant with the HEFCE REF policy. However, they may be useful for networking and collaboration.
  • Copies of publications downloaded from electronic resources: generally these must not be re-posted online as this would break the terms of the licences that we have agreed with the provider. An exception to this is if an article has been published with a Creative Commons (CC) licence , which would allow re-use of a copy downloaded from the publisher’s website, with attribution. The exact nature of the re-use permitted will depend on which CC licence is used – see the Creative Commons website for details of the licences.
  • Early drafts of journal articles: it is customary in some disciplines for these to be shared online; however caution is advised if the draft is likely to be substantially similar to the version that is going to be published. If this is the case there is a risk that publishers may feel that they can’t publish it.
  • If there is more than one author of a paper: it is important to check with all other co-authors that they agree to the paper being shared, re-posted or re-published.