Meeting like-minded classmates and colleagues with shared interests is part and parcel to your professional growth. The conference is the most common venue for connecting with such people--perhaps a prospective employer. And while doing so, it is natural to exchange contact information.
The conference is also useful for promoting your research, as well as yourself. Yet there are so many of those you can attend in a given time period due to financial, geographical, temporal, or other constraints.* So how else could you make connections, promote self and research and yet do so in a way to expand your reach?
Researcher profiles can be used to maximize impact of your work and connect with other researchers. If and when you are starting out, here are some important considerations:
You might also want to consider how many profiles you would like to manage. Having more than one profile over different platforms can be time consuming, not to mention prone to inconsistencies. Consider managing one or two that are most useful, and those that link to others for consistency.
Managing your researcher identity can enhance your metrics to be more reliable and consistent. Here are ways to manage your research identity:
By creating and managing your own profile, you provide and promote accurate and complete information about your research.
Linkedin is your networking site for professionals in all fields. Having a Linkedin profile is similar to having an online CV. Here you can also interact with professionals and increase your research impact. Add all your relevant work experiences, education attainment, and professional certificates. You can even request recommendations from your connections, or even write a glowing recommendation for your connections.
Google Scholar Profiles provide a simple way for authors to showcase their academic publications. You can check who is citing your articles, graph citations over time, and compute several citation metrics. You can also make your profile public, so that it may appear in Google Scholar results when people search for your name.
ORCID is an international, interdisciplinary, and not-for-profit organization that provides a robust and universal researcher profile system. ORCID enables transparent and trustworthy connections between your research and your affiliations by providing a unique identifier for you to use with your name as you engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities. Institutions, funders, and publishers are increasingly adopting ORCID into their workflow, application, and submission processes.
Your ORCID ID provides you a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from other researchers. It also allows you to easily and uniquely attach your identity to your scholarly works, i.e. datasets, articles, books/book chapters, theses, dissertations, patents, etc.
Journal publishers and databases use ORCID IDs, as well.
ResearchGate is like LinkedIn for scholarly researchers. Here you are allowed to upload your research outputs to share publicly or to share only to particular individuals (pre-prints, full articles, or datasets).
ResearchGate is a for-profit company, so read the Terms of Use carefully. Know what your publication agreement allows you to share before you upload.
Given the above choices, feel free to pick one, two, or maybe all of the above, and set up an account. Build your online researcher profile and start connecting with fellow classmates in this REU and beyond.
Report broken or outdated links to Bryan Briones at bbriones@auctr.edu.