In yesterday’s installment of the Impact Challenge, you learned how to stay up-to-date in your field by following specific scholars’ work. Today, we’re going to take a complementary approach to the same thing: setting up alerts for subject areas. These alerts will send the newest research into your inbox, with very little effort on your part.

You’ll set up email alerts for Academia.edu, Google Scholar, and other scholarly networks that will keep you abreast of the newest research in your field.

Academia.edu

Logon to Academia.edu and search for a subject area in the top search bar. As you begin typing, you’ll notice suggestions populating the short-form search results:

When the subject you’re interested in appears, click on it to head to the subject page. On the subject page, click the “Follow [Subject]” button on the right-hand side of the screen:

A number of similar “Research Interests” will be suggested to you on this screen, too. (See them outlined in purple, above.) Use this list for an easy way to find other subject areas worth getting updates for, too.

Next, you’ll need to make sure you have emails enabled for these alerts. Head to Account Settings > Email Notifications. Under the “Papers” section, select “There are new top papers for the Research Interests I’m following”:

ResearchGate

ResearchGate makes it a bit more complicated: logon, go to your profile page, scroll down to find the Topics section of your profile, click “Edit” and add the subject areas you want to follow to your profile:

Then, to view new publications from the Topics you’re following, click the “Publications” tab at the top of your profile, then select “Your field of research” from the right-hand navigation panel:

You’ll now see all new publications from your Topics. To make sure you get emails when new publications are added, go to Settings > Notifications and under the Scheduled Updates section, select the “Weekly digest of activities in my topics” option:

Remember, as we mentioned in yesterday’s challenge, that ResearchGate and Academia.edu have both prompted some complaints about the volume of email they send; like other social networks (LinkedIn is a particularly noteworthy example), they are trying to get you engaged with their site as often as possible, which can result in more inbox chatter than we’d like.

However, emails targeted at your specific interests can be quite useful–we’ve talked to a lot of researchers who list this as their favorite feature of Academia. edu and ResearchGate. The nice thing is that both services make it pretty easy to disable the alerts if they become too noisy, so you can try it and see for yourself without much risk.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar’s recommends specific papers for you based on your publication history and your “Library” of saved papers by other authors. Over time, as you save more papers to your personal library and add more of your papers to your Google Scholar profile, their recommendations get more accurate.

From the Google Scholar homepage, click the My Updates link at the top:

On the “My Updates” page, you’ll see a list of recommended publications. Click “Save” beneath any citation you’d like to have added to your “My Library” to remember and read later:

Now, each time you login to Google Scholar, you’ll have a customized reading list waiting for you. Sadly, you can’t set up Google Scholar to email you a weekly reading list, but I imagine that’s not too far off.

You can set up general topical alerts, however: visit the “Alerts” link at the top of your Google Scholar homepage, click the red “Create Alert” button and type in the phrase you want Google Scholar to search for, the more specific the better (for example, set an alert for “selectins” rather than “cell biology”). Any time Google Scholar finds a new article that matches your search, it’ll send you an email alert.

You can also set up alerts for other papers cite your work (these papers will almost always be relevant to your research interests). To do that, visit your Google Scholar profile, click the “Follow” button, select “Follow new citations” and click “Create Alert.”

Mendeley

You can use Mendeley groups to stay up-to-date on publications posted to groups, which are often a peer-filtered recommendation that sometimes can find articles that you wouldn’t otherwise discover.

Login to Mendeley, select “Groups” from drop-down next to the search box in the upper-right corner, and type your research interest into the search box. A list of related groups will appear in your search results:

On the group page that’s most relevant to you, click the “Join this group” button to start receiving updates:

Now, every time you login to Mendeley, updates from your groups–including recommended papers–will appear in your newsfeed.

The final step is to set up email notifications, so you don’t have to return to Mendeley to get updates on new recommendations. Click “My Account” > “Notifications” in the upper-right corner of the screen, and under the Group Notifications section, make sure both the email and web notifications for “Someone posts an update or a comment in a group” are selected:

Zotero

Zotero works similarly to Mendeley. To search for groups in your discipline, login and select the Groups tab from the Zotero homepage. Search for a group, select a group page, and click the “Join this group” button on the group’s page.

To get notifications from Zotero when new publications are added to a group, click the Settings link in the upper-right corner, navigate to Email, then select “New post in a group discussion” and click “Update settings”:

Twitter

Twitter is another solid, real-time recommendation engine for publications, articles, and news related to your research interests. To get the best recommendations, you’ll need to follow individuals who tend to tweet about the subjects you’re interested in, and also to follow curated lists of related accounts.

To find people who are tweeting content related to your discipline, use Twitter’s advanced search to search for relevant phrases:

On the search results page, select “People” from the left-hand navigation bar and then peruse the bios where your search phrase appears. Follow any individuals that look relevant to you.

To find lists related to your search terms, click “Timelines” on the left-hand navigation bar of the advanced search screen, and relevant lists will appear in the search results:

Click on the list titles to explore, and for any that you’d like to follow, click “Subscribe” in the left-hand column:

Bonus: you can also click “List members” and “List subscribers” to find individual accounts to follow.

Now, every time you log in to Twitter, you’ll get up-to-the-minute recommendations on recent news and papers from others in your discipline.

One big drawback to Twitter is that you tend to miss anything that hasn’t been recently tweeted about, meaning you have to login fairly regularly to the service to benefit from the recommendations on an ongoing basis.

Also, unlike the other approaches we’ve discussed above, Twitter is a person-based feed, not a subject-based one…that means you may get a lot of information about what people had for lunch, along with the latest research news. While this can actually be a great way to help you build your research community, it can also be overwhelming depending on your goals.

Homework

On your preferred social networks, sign up to receive disciplinary recommendations and recent publications in your inbox for at least three topics.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s challenge: using the mainstream media to give your work a broader audience.

The next two days of the Impact Challenge are devoted to being impactful in an indirect way: staying on top of your field, both the work of your fellow researchers and all the most relevant new work in your field. Staying on the cutting edge of your discipline can help you find unexpected opportunities for collaboration and spark your own creativity.

In today’s challenge, you’ll learn how discover your colleagues’ new publications, software, and more.

Tracking your colleagues’ new articles

You can use many of the same social networking platforms you’ve already signed up for to track the new work of your colleagues in your email inbox. Plus, the powers of PubMed and IFTTT can be combined to find publications that aren’t being shared elsewhere.

Academia.edu

Login to Academia.edu and search for a colleague:

On their profile, click the “Follow” button:

Now you’ll see their most recent updates in your homepage newsfeed whenever you login to Academia.edu.

To stay up to date via email–so you don’t have to login as often–you’ll need to update your email notifications settings. In the upper right hand corner of your screen, click the arrow next to your name, then navigate to Account Settings > Email Notifications. Under the Papers section, select “Someone I’m following adds a work” and click Save at the bottom of the screen:

ResearchGate

ResearchGate works similarly. Search for a colleague and select their profile:

On their profile page, click the “Follow” button:

Adjust your email settings by clicking the arrow next to your picture in the upper right-hand corner and navigating to Settings > Notifications. Under the Network section, select “Adds a publication to their profile” and “Uploads a publication full-text”:

Both ResearchGate and Academia.edu have a few drawbacks to them: they only work when your colleague adds an article to their profile themselves, so it won’t be a complete record of their recent publication history. And when you initially follow your colleague, they’ll get a notification–which could be uncomfortable in some contexts.

Google Scholar

To get email updates when a colleague adds a new work, first search for them in Google Scholar:

Next, select their profile from among the search results:

On their profile page, click the Follow button, input your email address, select “Follow new articles,” then click the “Create Alert” button:

PubMed & IFTTT

The search index PubMed (and its counterpart, Europe PubMed Central) is a fantastic, free place to find out all the new articles that have been published in the life sciences (and some other disciplines, too). By hooking it up with IFTTT, you can get an email whenever a colleague’s new article appears.

Logon to PubMed and click “Advanced” under the search box at the top of the page. Then, select “Author” from the drop-down box next to the top search box on the Advanced Search screen. If your colleague has a very common name, you can search by the more restrictive “Author Full” or “Author Identifier” options instead, and search by their complete name or ORCID identifier.

In the search box, type in your colleague’s name, last name first, and select their name from the auto-generated options:

Click Search and on the next screen, look at the results to verify that they’re accurate.

Assuming they are, your next step is to create an RSS feed for your colleague’s publications. This will update every time a new publication matches your colleague’s name.

Click the RSS icon under the search bar at the top of the screen, rename the feed if you want, then click “Create RSS”:

On the pop-up box that appears, click “XML” and on the next page of XML-formatted results, you’ll see the guts of your feed. What you’re going to use from this is the URL for your RSS feed, which appears in the address bar of your browser.

Now it’s time to set up IFTTT. Logon to IFTTT and click “Create Recipe”. Your “this” will be a feed. The trigger will be “New Feed Item.” Copy the PubMed RSS feed URL into the “Feed URL” box that appears. Your “that” will be an email. Select “Send me an email,” make any edits you want to the title of your email and the contents of your email body, and click “Create Action.”

Now, whenever a new item appears on the PubMed search, you’ll get an email update.

You might be wondering, “Why not create an alert using the NCBI interface?” Well, I haven’t had great experiences with that interface–notifications I’ve set up haven’t worked very well, and resetting lost passwords is difficult–and so I want to recommend a more elegant option for the purposes of this Challenge.

Tracking new software and presentations

You can also track others’ new software and presentations using GitHub and Slideshare.

GitHub & IFTTT

You can use GitHub’s newsfeed to receive an email whenever anyone you follows does anything on GitHub: makes changes to existing code, uploads new code, comments on others’ code, and so on.

First, you’ll need to follow your colleagues. Search for your colleagues from the “Search” bar at the top of your GitHub screen:

On their profiles, click the “Follow” button:

Once you’ve finished following your colleagues, on your GitHub homepage, you’ll now see a stream of updates:

Click “Subscribe to your news feed” to the right of the feed and you’ll be taken to the XML-encoded page for your entire feed. Use that feed URL to create a new email alert on IFTTT, following the directions from the PubMed & IFTTT hack above.

Now you’ll have a lot of information in your inbox. If you’d prefer to only follow updates for specific, existing projects, you can follow repositories instead.

Here’s how: find the repository you want to follow updates for on your colleague’s profile or by searching for it by name. On the repository page, click the “Watch” button in the upper right-hand corner:

Then, adjust your email settings to get notifications whenever that repository is updated. Click the gear “settings” icon in the upper right-hand corner of the page, then go to Notification Center. Check the “Email” box under the “Watching” section to get email updates.

Slideshare

To get updates when a colleague adds new presentations to Slideshare, first search for your colleague and select their profile:

On their profile homepage, click “Follow” on the left-hand side of the profile:

Next, you’ll update your email preferences so you can get an email whenever they add a new presentation. Go to Account Settings > Email and select “When someone I follow uploads a SlideShare”:

Limitations

Nearly all of these options for tracking your colleagues’ research outputs only work if they–and you–have claimed a profile on the sites we’ve recommended above (aside from PubMed). And some are less than enthusiastic about claiming their profiles on Academia.edu and ResearchGate, due to what some scholars have called their “spammy” emailing practices.

Another potential limitation: you’re potentially going to get a lot of emails with this method of tracking your colleagues. To get around these notifications clogging your inbox, I recommend setting up inbox filters to push these emails to a dedicated “Notifications” folder in your email. Here’s how to set up notifications for Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.

Homework

Find and follow five of your colleagues and competitors on as many of the above sites as you can.

Tomorrow, we’ll broaden our scope to follow all new publications in your field, so you can find new publications and other scholarly outputs from both your colleagues and researchers you don’t yet know.

Peer review is another area in academia that’s got a lot of untapped potential for demonstrating your impact.

New forms of peer review–open peer review for journals, post-publication peer review, and peer reviews written on sites like Publons–can help you establish expertise in your discipline. They turn anonymous service to your field into a standalone scholarly product, and also communicate feedback on published work to your discipline much more quickly than letters to the editor can.

Open Peer Review was borne of the idea that by making author and reviewer identities public, more civil and constructive peer reviews will be submitted, and peer reviews can be put into context.

And Open Post-publication Peer Review builds upon that by allowing anyone to publish a review of an already-published paper, whether on their blog or a standalone peer review platform like Faculty of 1000 or PubPeer. After all, why should official reviewers be the only ones allowed to share their views on a paper?

In today’s challenge, we’ll explore your options for writing Open Peer Reviews, talk about ways you can make your reviews citable and discoverable, and share tips for documenting your peer reviews on your CV.

Traditional peer review

For a very long time, publishers favored private, anonymous (‘blinded’) peer review, under the assumption that it would reduce bias and that authors would prefer for criticisms of their work to remain private. Turns out, their assumptions weren’t backed up by evidence.

It can be easy for authors to guess the identities of their reviewers (especially in small fields). And yet, a consequence of this “anonymous” legacy system is that you, as a reviewer, can’t take credit for your work.

Sure, you can say you’re a reviewer for Physical Review B, but you’re unable to point to specific reviews or discuss how your feedback made a difference. That means that others can’t read your reviews to understand your intellectual contributions to your field, which–in the case of some reviews–can be enormous.

Shades of Open Peer Review

In recent years, scientists have increasingly called for an Open alternative to traditional peer review. This has manifested in journals adopting Open Peer Review (OPR), researchers taking to their blogs to review already-published work, and the proliferation of Open and Post-publication Peer Review sites like Faculty of 1000, PubPeer, and Publons.

Each shade of OPR has its advantages and disadvantages. Let’s take a closer look.

Open Peer Review for journals

Here’s how Open Peer Reviews work, more or less: reviewers are assigned to a paper, and they know the author’s identity. They review the paper and sign their name. The reviews are then submitted to the editor and author (who now knows their reviewers’ identities, thanks to the signed reviews). When the paper is published, the signed reviews are published alongside it.

Journals including BMJ and PeerJ require or allow Open Peer Reviews.

Participating in journal-based OPR can be a good way to experiment with OPR as it’s officially sanctioned by the author, journal, and reviewer alike.

One drawback to this type of Open Peer Review is that journals sometimes do not provide permanent identifiers for the reviews themselves, making it difficult to track the reach and impact of your review rather than for the journal article you’ve reviewed. Luckily, PeerJ is working to change that–they’re now issuing DOIs for Open peer reviews, which comprise 40% of their reviews.

Third-party Open and Post-publication Peer Review sites

In the past few years, a number of standalone, independent peer review sites have emerged: PubPeer, Publons, and Faculty of 1000 are among the many. These sites allow you to review both published and under-review papers on their platform, and in the case of Publons, export your reviews to journals for use.

These sites also allow you to submit your reviews as Open Peer Reviews, and to create profiles showcasing your peer reviews. Some sites like Publons also issue DOIs for reviews, making them citable research objects.

Blogging as Open Post-publication Peer Review

In this type of Open Peer Review, academics take to their blogs to share their thoughts on a recently published paper or preprint. These reviews can run the gamut from highly-technical reviews oriented towards other scientists (a good example is this post on Rosie Redfield’s blog) to reviews written for a more general audience (like Mike Eisen’s post on the same study).

A major advantage to blogging your Open Peer Reviews is that you don’t have to have permission to do it; you can just fire up your blog and start reviewing. But a downside is that the review isn’t formally sanctioned by the journal, and so can carry less weight than formal reviews.

No matter what type of Open Peer Review you opt for, if it’s got your name attached to it and is available for all to read, you can use it to showcase your expertise in your area of research.

Write an Open Peer Review

If you’d prefer to go the journal-sanctioned Open Peer Review route, choose to review for journals that already offer Open Peer Review. A number of forward-thinking journals allow it (BMJ, PeerJ, and F1000 Research, among others).

To find others, use Cofactor’s excellent journal selector tool:

• Head over to the Cofactor journal selector tool
• Click “Peer review,”
• Select “Fully Open,” and
• Click “Search” to see a full list of Open Peer Review journals

Alternatively, you can write your peer review on a stand-alone post-publication peer review platform like Faculty of 1000 Prime, Publons, or others we mentioned above. Find a platform that works for you, sign up for it, and start reviewing!

And if you choose to do Open Post-publication Peer Review through your blog, just logon and start reviewin’!

Get citations and altmetrics for your peer reviews

Once your Open Peer Reviews are online, you can discover citations, shares, discussions, and bookmarks of them if they’ve got permanent identifiers that are easily trackable. The most common ID that’s used for peer reviews is a DOI.

There are two main ways you can get a DOI for your reviews:

• Review for a journal like PeerJ or peer review platform like Publons that issues DOIs automatically

• Archive your review in a repository that issues DOIs, like Figshare

When you’ve got your DOI, use it! Include it on your CV (more on that below), as a link when sharing your reviews with others, and so on. And encourage others to always link to your review using the DOI resolver link (these are created by putting “http://doi.org/” in front of your DOI; here’s an example of what one looks like: http://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.603v0.1/reviews/2).

Elevate your peer reviews

Peer review may be viewed primarily as a “service” activity, but things are changing–and you can help change ‘em even more quickly. Here’s how.

As a reviewer, raise awareness by listing and linking to your journal-sanctioned reviews on your CV, adjacent to any mentions of the journals you review for. By linking to your specific reviews (using the DOI resolver link we talked about above), anyone looking at your CV can easily read the reviews themselves.

You can also illustrate for others the impacts of Open Peer Review by including citations and altmetrics for your reviews on your CV. An easy way to do that is to include on your CV a link to the review on your Impactstory profile. You can also include other quantitative measures of your reviews’ quality, like Peerage of Science’s Peerage Essay Quality scores, Publons’ merit scores, or a number of other quantitative indicators of peer-review quality. Just be sure to provide context to any numbers you include.

If you decide to do open peer reviews mostly on your blog or standalone peer review sites, you’ll likely not want to list them under Service to journals, per se, but instead perhaps under Outreach or more general Service to your field.

Limitations

A big concern for early career researchers and graduate students lies in openly criticizing senior researchers in their field. What if they’re retaliated against? Anonymity would protect these ECR-reviewers from their colleagues.

Yet as Mick Watson argues, any retaliation that could theoretically occur would be considered a form of scientific misconduct, on par with plagiarism–and therefore off-limits to scientists with any sense.

We think that you’re the best judge of whether or not a peer review could have unintended consequences, and suggest that you go with your gut when deciding to make your review open or not.

Homework

Your assignment for today is to choose an article to review on your blog. If you’re new to reviewing or unsure how to go about writing a free-form peer review as a blog post, here are some guides to help you get started.

And in the future, consider doing more journal-sanctioned Open Peer Reviews.

A screenshot from 'Wavechasers and the Samoan Passage' video abstract

Video abstracts are a great way to explain your work to the public and researchers outside of your field. To paraphrase, they’re like value propositions on steroids.

These 3-5 minute videos allow you to sum up what you’ve accomplished and documented in a journal article and, crucially, why it’s important to the world. You can use video abstracts illustrate concepts and experiments explained in your article, to “introduce viewers to the equipment and tools you have used in your research and engage with your audience in a more informal manner,” explains IOP Press.

An increasing number of publishers are adopting video abstracts as a great way to market research articles, and in less than an hour you can create one of your own.

In today’s challenge, we’ll walk you through the basics of creating a video abstract for a journal article: how to write a script, record the video using common equipment, and share your video to get maximum visibility for your research.

Step 1. Learn what makes a good video abstract

Here are some award-winning and highly-ranked video abstracts:

• GBV 5-Minute Science Fair [Public Health & the Pandemic of Violence Against Women]: a straightforward video of a researcher describing her study of domestic violence among Latino immigrant communities in Washington DC. It has good production value–well-lit, easy to hear, plus some custom titles and credits added on to the beginning and ending–but is simple enough in concept that anyone could pull it off.

• Dangling-bond charge qubit on a silicon surface: in just under five minutes, this video abstract sets a stage for what qubits are and why this particular study advances our knowledge of qubits. The researchers reuse computer-generated graphics and figures from their paper to illustrate the concepts they explain in the video, to great effect.

• The Bacterial Effector VopL Organizes Actin into Filament-like Structures: this video features three researchers describing their paper with the aid of paper and pen, protein models, and some sweet action shots in the lab. It’s a highly technical explanation that can be a bit dry at points, but still manages to explain the study in a manner that non-specialists like me can understand. It’s successful even without the cool footage from the rainforest that the next video boasts, because the authors explain things well and go out of their way to illustrate concepts for the viewer.

• Wavechasers & the Samoan Passage: an action packed video abstract that seems more like a movie trailer than an explanation of geophysics. (“The Wavechasers team travels to Samoa (experiencing Samoan culture and hospitality while there) to measure an undersea river 5 km beneath the sea surface.”) Setting aside the insane production value of the piece, what really drives this video abstract is the story behind the research.

So, what makes these video abstracts good?

Wiley explains:

The best video abstracts tend to answer at least two of the questions below:

• What does your article cover?
• What are the implications for future research on this topic or where would you like to see the field go?
• How can an instructor use your article in their teaching?

Viewers need to know how your research is relevant to their lives, their universe, or the advancement of knowledge in your field.

But you can’t just say anything in your video abstract. Aim to keep your video simple and short, refrain from using jargon, and–if possible–tell a story that’ll hook your viewers within the first 30 seconds and keep them watching until the end.

With these principles in mind, let’s get started!

Step 2. Gather your equipment

The basic equipment you’ll need is readily available to many researchers

• A computer, webcam, and microphone: Many newer model laptops now come with webcams and microphones built-in. If you don’t have one, try a grad student in your lab or borrow one from a colleague. You can also use a desktop computer with a standalone webcam and microphone, if need be. And if you plan to do a simple video abstract (like the GBV point-and-shoot video featured above), a smartphone that can record video will do in a pinch.

• Video recording software: If you’ve got a late model Macbook, the pre-installed Quicktime Player software can be used to create a simple screencast and iMovie can be used to edit any videos you create. Otherwise, check out Lifehacker’s list of best screencasting software for the top Windows and Mac options.

• Something interesting to say about your research: Video abstracts are only as good as the stories they tell. No amount of production value can make up for a dispassionate explanation or lack of relatability to the viewer’s own life. In the next step, we’ll share some research-backed tips on how to communicate your results, but at the very least, you’ll need the kernels of the story from which we’ll make this video abstract bloom.

Once you’ve got all that together, it’s time to choose a format and write your script.

Step 3. Choose your format

Do you want to do a point-and-shoot video that’s simply 2 minutes of you describing your paper and why it rocks?

Would you prefer to structure your video abstract like a lightning-talk screencast, with you explaining slides and videos that illustrate your points from off-camera?

Or maybe you’ve got an amazing story to go along with your study, and some buddies in your university’s press office that have a lot of time and money to help you make a splash with a killer movie trailer-style video?

The format of the video you’ll create will likely be dependent upon what equipment and technical expertise you have on hand. And your script will be dependent upon your video’s format.

So, catalogue what you’ve got available and decide upon a format. Because we’re getting to the good stuff next: your video’s script.

Step 4. Write the script

You’ll use your script to narrate the story of your video. It doesn’t have to be written out, word-for-word; if you’re comfortable ad libbing, a simple outline will do. But you’ll still need to plan ahead on what you’re going to say, to some degree.

Create an outline

Your outline should follow a basic structure.

A problem statement

What question was unanswered before you began your research, and how did that affect the viewer’s life or the advancement of knowledge in your field? (“We knew that prostate cancer affected residents of three New York counties at a rate double that of the rest of the state, but no one knew why.”)

A one-sentence explanation of how your research solves that problem

Using as simple language as possible, describe the results of your study and what bearing it might have on a solution to the problem statement. (“After a 30-year study of New York residents and countless environmental tests on both humans and lab animals, we discovered that contaminated groundwater was likely the culprit.”) Both this explanation and the problem statement should fit into the first 30 seconds of your video.

An in-depth explanation of your study and results

Here you can dive into detail, setting up the story of how you conducted your study–the types of experiments you ran or data you collected and analyzed–and the specifics of the results you found and what they might mean. Remember to refrain from using jargon unless absolutely necessary, and explain any jargon you do use.

Reiterate what the problem is, how you solved it, and why the world’s a better place now

In the final few seconds of the video, you’ll remind the viewer of the problem your study has solved, and bring it back home to explain what bearing that has on their life. (“Now that we know that groundwater contamination resulting from the fracking methods used by most drillers does indeed cause cancer, we may be able to convince politicians to ban these methods in the future, so no one else is affected.”)

Invite the viewer to become a reader

If the viewer’s made it this far into the video, they’re likely hooked on what you’ve said and want to know more. Use this opportunity to point them to your journal article or preprint where they can read the full study.

Build your outline into an engaging script

Once you’ve got a solid outline, you’ll need to decide if writing a full script will be useful for the video.

If you’ve decided to do a point-and-shoot video, an outline of your talk is probably your best bet. It will keep you on your main talking points, while avoiding sounding stiff or over-rehearsed.

Doing a lightning-talk screencast instead? Use your outline to create a slide deck, and then write out what you’re going to say, word for word, so you can read it while doing the screencast.

For a movie trailer abstract, you’ll definitely want a full script, and you’ll probably want to develop it with the help of experienced A/V professionals in your university’s press office.

If you decide to write a full script, keep in mind that 120-150 words roughly translate into a minute of video. You’ll want to keep your video to 3-5 minutes, so plan to write a script that’s 750 words or less.

Need some inspiration? A great example script can be found on TheScientistVideographer.com.

Step 4. Record your video abstract!

CC-BY 2.0 Dave Dugdale

If you’re recording your video abstract for sharing on a publisher’s website, you’ll need to record your video according to their guidelines. Be sure to double-check their limits on the video’s length, quality, and how and where it’s shared.

If you’re creating a point-and-shoot video or a movie trailer-style abstract, pay close attention to the quality of sound and lights. Videos that are difficult to watch won’t get many viewers. The University Affairs blog recommends using “a lapel microphone, ideally, or else a very quiet room. Ensure that lights are facing the speaker and avoid backlighting, which happens when you situate the interview subject against a window.”

And if you’re creating a lightning-talk screencast video, consider paying a professional voiceover artist to narrate it. They can be easily hired on Fiverr for around $5/minute of voiceover, and often have the experience and audio equipment that’ll make your video sound professionally produced.

If you’d rather do the voiceover yourself, keep Videobrewery’s advice in mind:

Keep dialogue to between 125 and 150 words a minute.  And while you might be able to speak 200 or more words per minute on your own, keep in mind that the voiceover needs time to breathe, allowing viewers to absorb what you’re saying (this is especially true if the content is particularly dense or technical in nature). Machine gun fire dialogue quickly overwhelms viewers, causing abandonment and decreased comprehension.

Once your video has been recorded, you can choose to edit it with your video editing software. This is a good opportunity to remove your tangents and flubbed lines, but it might require you to learn a new skill. Sometimes, it’s just easier to record a second take, instead.

One final option that’ll make your video stand out: add intro and outro music that’s licensed for reuse, which can be hunted down on the Internet Archive for free or purchased cheaply from AudioJungle.

When you’ve finished recording, buy yourself a drink! You’ve just accomplished a pretty big feat: video-enhanced public outreach.

Now let’s get your video to the public!

Step 5. Upload the video

Where to share it

Two popular platforms for video sharing are YouTube and Vimeo. Both can be used to track views and likes for your video, and allow you to copy-and-paste simple codes to embed your video in other websites. Neither offer long-term preservation, so you might consider backing up your video abstract on Figshare or a similar service.

YouTube

YouTube is free and easy to use, but it has its drawbacks: they reserve the right to place ads on and alongside your videos.

Vimeo

Vimeo is also fairly easy to use and offers a well-designed, ad-free viewing interface. Its main drawback is that you have to pay for video uploads greater than 500 MB in size. You can  disable comments and allow viewers to download your video, if you wish.

What to include

When you upload your video, be sure to include a descriptive title (one that matches your article is ideal), a 2-3 sentence description of your video abstract’s content, and a full citation to your paper (including a link to a freely-accessible copy of its fulltext, if it’s been published in a toll-access journal).

Step 6. Promote your awesome new video abstract

Now that your video is online, let’s get it some viewers!

Some good places to share your video on the Web include:

• On the article homepage: if the journal allows it, embed your video next to the written abstract for your paper. That way, potential readers get a more engaging glimpse of what your paper’s about, beyond what appears in the written abstract.
• Your website: embed your video on your website’s homepage, or on the Publications or Research pages.
• Your blog: share the video along with a link to your publication and a transcript of your video, adapted into a blogpost.
• Twitter and Facebook: these social media platforms were practically made for sharing video with the public. Share a link with your next update and both platforms will automagically embed it for your followers and friends.
• We Share Science: this video aggregator allows you to share your science video abstract with other scientists and students. You can also follow other authors and video creators on the site to stay on top of the best video abstracts–useful for discovering what works well so you can borrow it to use in your own videos!

Homework

Choose an article you’ve written and create a video abstract for it. And once you’ve created it, share it on at least one of the platforms or websites we mention above.

Tomorrow, we’ll explore how you can turn peer reviews into an opportunity serve your discipline and build your brand as an expert in your field.

By now, you’re pretty prolific online–you’ve got lots of open access slides, data, software, and articles to your name. But which name is that?

There’s a lot of potential for confusion and mistaken identities in scholarly publishing. You might share a name with other, similarly named researchers–for example, there are more than 1200 “J Wang”s in nanoscience alone! Or you might have changed your name at some point during your career. How are others supposed to know if they’ve found the right you?

Luckily, some smart people have been working to make name disambiguation easy.

ORCID IDs are permanent identifiers for researchers. They protect your unique scholarly identity and help you keep your publication record up-to-date with very little effort.

ORCID was founded in 2012 as a non-profit organization comprised of publishers, funders, and institutions like Nature Publishing Group, Wellcome Trust, and Cornell University. Over 1 million researchers have ORCID IDs so far, and the number continues to grow. At Impactstory, we’re big fans of how they’ve embraced open source code and open data while respecting user privacy.

Setting up your ORCID profile will help you claim your correct, complete publication record. In this challenge, you’re going to claim your ORCID ID so you can automate the collection of your work and related metrics in a future challenge.

Here’s how to get started with ORCID.

Step 1. Claim your ORCID in under 30 seconds

First things first: logon to ORCID.org/register and sign up for an ORCID account.

At this step in the process, you’ll add very basic information like your name and email address, choose a default level of privacy for your profile, accept ORCID’s terms of use, and click “Register”.

If your name is already in the ORCID system, you’ll then be prompted to claim an existing profile or make a new one.

Congrats! You now have an ORCID identifier. And now you’re on your way to having an ORCID profile, too.

Step 2. Fill out your ORCID profile

Next, you’ll fill out your ORCID profile so that others can verify who you are, and also learn more about you. Here’s what to add:

Links to LinkedIn, your website, and your other profiles on the web

First, add links to your Google Scholar and LinkedIn profiles, your personal website, and any other websites where you’ve got a scholarly profile.

On the left-hand menu on your main profile page, click the pencil “Edit” icon next to “Websites.”

In the fields that appear, add links to your LinkedIn, Google Scholar, and other professional profiles you’ve created so far as a part of this challenge. Also add a link to your website. Describe each link adequately enough so your profile’s viewers know if they’re going to click a Google Scholar link vs. a ResearchGate link, and so on. Click “Save changes” when you’re done.

Import your publications by connecting other scholarly identifiers

Any type of scholarly output you create, ORCID can handle.

Are you a traditional scientists, who writes only papers and the occasional book chapter? ORCID can track ‘em.

Are you instead a cutting-edge computational biologist who releases datasets and figures for your thesis, as they are created? ORCID can track that, too.

Not a scientist at all, but an art professor? You can import your works using ORCID, as well, using ISNI2ORCID… you get the idea.

ORCID will even start importing information about your service to your discipline soon!

To connect to other identifiers and indices, from your main profile page, scroll down to the “Works” section and click the “Link Works” button. Then you’ll be prompted to connect to the services of your choice.

Once you’ve connected your profiles, your works will be imported automatically to ORCID. If you’ve connected another scholarly identifier like your Scopus Author ID, a link will appear in your left-hand menu bar.

Complete your personal information

Finally, add your education credentials and employment history that might not have imported when you connected other services.

Under each section, click the “Add Manually” button, fill out as much descriptive information as you’re comfortable sharing, choose the level of privacy you’d prefer under the “Who can see this?” section in the upper right of the pop-up box, and then click “Add to list” to commit it to your profile.

Step 3. Complete your publication record

It’s possible that not all of your publications and other works will have imported. You can add them in three ways:

1. Manually by clicking the “Add Work Manually” button under your Works section and adding the publications one-by-one.
2. Importing works from your Mendeley profile using the Mendeley2ORCID service. Just login with your ORCID ID in the top-right corner of the screen, approve a sync with Mendeley, and your works will be imported to ORCID.
3. Batch import your works using the new BibTeX import button. You can export your works from Mendeley, EndNote, and many other reference management services in BibTeX format, then click the “Link BibTeX” button under the Works section of your profile, upload your BibTeX file, and you’re done!

If any duplicate records were imported with the Mendeley sync or BibTeX import, you can delete them by clicking the trashcan icon next to the duplicate work’s title.

Step 4. Connect ORCID to the rest of your online life

You can connect your ORCID account with websites including Web of Science, Figshare, and Impactstory, among many others.

Once they’re connected, you can easily push information back and forth between services–meaning that a complete ORCID record will allow you to automatically import the same information to multiple places, rather than having to enter the same information over and over again on different websites.

And new services are connecting to ORCID every day, sharing information across an increasing number of platforms–repositories, funding agencies, and more!

Limitations

ORCID is still a relatively basic service. You cannot edit incorrect entries, automatically detect and remove duplicates, or export your profile information in BibTeX, JSON-LD, or other researcher-friendly formats.

ORCID also has gaps in its coverage. It doesn’t find all of your publications, all of the time, and connectable third-party services like Scopus don’t always, either. That means you might have to manually add some works and information to your profile, same as you do for ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and all other scholarly profiles.

Homework

Your job for today is to make sure your ORCID profile is complete. Check over your Works list to be sure all of your scholarly outputs are present; add grants you’ve received in the Funding section (NSF, NIH, Wellcome Trust, and some other funders’ grants can be automatically imported); and connect your ORCID profile to your other scholarly profiles on the Web. (At the very least, add a link to your website, your LinkedIn and Google Scholar profiles, and connect ORCID to other scholarly identifiers like your ResearcherID if you have one.)

You should also make sure that your scholarly linkages work both ways. Copy your full ORCID ID (hint: it’s your profile URL that’s got a long, 16-digit number in it) and paste it into your Academia.edu, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, LinkedIn and other profiles, as well as your website and blog.

Tomorrow, we tackle a fun challenge: making a video abstract/explainer video for your work!

CC-BY JISC

Over the past few days, we’ve talked about ways you can “open up” your datasets, slide decks, and software. Now let’s do the same for your publications!

Publishing in Open Access (OA) journals is a great way to make your work available for all to read, and it has the added advantage of getting you more citations, views, Mendeley readers and Twitter mentions. What’s not to love about that?

In today’s challenge, we’ll discuss some advantages and drawbacks to publishing your work Open Access, and share tips on how to publish OA.

Open Access publishing: wins and fails

Open Access publishing has some great advantages to it, and also some drawbacks that are important to consider. Let’s break down some of the arguments.

Wins

• More citations: Open Access journals can also get you more citations, as numerous studies have shown.

• More readers: A 2008 BMJ study showed that “full text downloads were 89% higher, PDF downloads 42% higher, and unique visitors 23% higher for open access articles than for subscription access articles.” These findings have been confirmed for other disciplines, as well. And a recent study by Euan at Altmetric.com showed that Mendeley readers were higher for OA articles, too.

• More altmetrics: The same Altmetric.com study found that Open Access articles also receive more tweets than toll-access journals.

• More access for those who need it: there are plenty of people who might need access to your studies–scholars from small institutions and developing countries, patient advocates, patients themselves, and citizen scientists. Publishing Open Access will allow it.

Fails

• Lack of prestige: It’s a sad fact that reviewers for tenure and promotion often judge the quality of articles by the journal of publication when skimming CVs. And unfamiliar titles in the publications list can sometimes lead to some serious career consequences. Article-level metrics can be an answer to this problem, though–a highly-cited paper is still highly-cited, no matter where it’s published.

• It can be expensive: many Open Access journals charge publication fees that cost anywhere from $75 to $4300, making OA publishing a non-starter for underfunded researchers. Fee waivers are available, though–we’ll talk more about those in a minute.

• Your colleagues might not see your paper: if you publish in anything but the top journals in your subject area, chances are that your colleagues won’t be aware of your paper’s existence. It’s hard nowadays for your colleagues to follow all the new developments in your field, so if you choose to publish OA, it might take a little legwork on your part to get them to notice your article.

We think that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, especially given the pace with which academia is changing to embrace Open Access. But it’s understandable if you’ve got career concerns. Luckily, you can make your articles OA without having to publish in a lesser-known OA journal.

Which Open Access approach is best for you?

There’s more than one way to be Open Access. In addition to the popularly-known “gold” OA route–publishing in an Open Access journal–you can also self-archive your traditionally published work (“green OA”) or pay a fee to a traditional, subscription journal to make your paper open access (“hybrid OA”). Here’s what you need to do for each.

Gold OA

Many Gold OA journals like PLOS Biology and BMC Medicine require that authors pay a publication fee or “article processing charge” upon acceptance for publication. Not all Gold OA journals require a fee however, and some publishers offer fee waivers for those who need financial assistance. With some careful planning, you can also cover Gold OA publishing fees by writing the expected fees into a grant budget or by getting assistance from your university’s Open Access fund. (More on both below.)

Hybrid OA

Some subscription journals will allow authors to pay a fee to make their paper Open Access, even if other papers in the journal are not. This practice is known as “Hybrid OA” publishing. Hybrid OA journals allow authors to both publish in a journal that is recognized by their peers, while also reaping the benefits of OA publishing. But such fees can be expensive for authors, and an uptake of 1-2% suggests that hybrid OA publishing isn’t a popular option.

Green OA

Green Open Access is the practice of publishing an article as you normally would in a subscription journal, and later posting a copy of your article on your website or a repository. It’s a popular option for those who don’t want to pay Open Access fees, but it has a major drawback: embargo periods.

Often, publisher restrictions mean researchers have to wait a year or longer to make their work available via Green OA, leading to major delays in the dissemination of their work. The Sherpa/Romeo guide is a great way to discover what your journal’s embargo policies are.

Open Access funds & fee waivers

If you decide to go the Gold or Hybrid OA routes but need some help meeting the publication fees, you’ve got several options.

University Open Access fund

Larger research universities sometimes have funds available for researchers who want to publish OA but can’t afford to pay out of pocket. The fund is sometimes based in the library, and other times it is stewarded by the campus research administration office. Often, there are restrictions as to how much assistance a researcher can request per year. The Open Access Directory has compiled a fairly comprehensive list of OA funds here.

Grant budgets

If you’re lucky enough to be a PI on a grant, you can often write in expected publication fees into your budget. (Or if you’re working with a forward-thinking PI, you might ask them to foot the bill out of their grant funds.) Given that more and more funding agencies require public access to the research they fund, they’re becoming increasingly amenable to covering such costs. Check with your campus grants administration office or your funding agency’s program officer for more information.

Fee waivers

Some Gold OA publishers will waive their publication fees for authors who hail from developing countries or who can document financial hardship. Check with your publisher as to whether such waivers are available, and what the qualifications are for applying.

Homework

Today’s homework is mostly planning for the future. Unless you’ve got an article in the hopper, waiting to be published, you’ll do the following with future publications in mind.

Research Open Access journals in your field: two places to start your research include Cofactor’s Journal Selector tool and the Directory of Open Access Journals’ listings. Both lists were curated with quality in mind.

Find out what OA funding options and fee waivers exist for you: contact your local librarian to see if the an OA fund exists at your institution, and search the websites of the journals you selected in the previous step to learn about what fee waiver programs they offer, if any.

Discover your Green OA rights & make your older research available: look up the journals where your most important papers were published on Sherpa/Romeo. Do they give you the right to self-archive your paper? If so, archive a copy of at least 3 of your papers on your website, institutional repository, or Figshare. And decide if you’d prefer to go the Green OA route with future publications, too.

Your conference slides don’t get a lot of love, do they? You tend to use them to present at conferences, then throw ‘em in a virtual desk drawer and forget about them.

Yet slides are visual aids that help us tell important stories about our research. And they can be useful to those who weren’t able to see your talk in person. So, why not share them?

In today’s challenge, we’re going to get your slide decks onto Slideshare so the world can see them.

Complete the Slideshare basics

Slideshare is a popular, free slide hosting service that many academics use to share their conference and classroom lecture slides.

First things first: visit Slideshare.net and click “signup” in the upper right corner. Next, you can choose to sign up with an email address or with your Facebook or LinkedIn profile.

Choose a handle for your profile that matches your name or your blog’s handle, so it will be easy for others to recognize you across platform.

Next, create a professional profile. If you’ve created your Slideshare account using LinkedIn, some of your personal information from LinkedIn will already be imported. If not, here’s how to edit your profile:

1. Hover over the person icon in the upper right corner, select “Account Settings” from the drop-down menu.

2. Select “Profile Details” from the left-hand navigation bar. Click “Personal Details.”

3. On the “Personal Details” page, add a photo (the same one you used for your LinkedIn account is perfect), your name, and information about where you work and what drives your research. Link to your website and click “Save”.

4. On the “Contact Details” page, add links to your Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook profiles. Click “Save”.

Now, whenever anyone finds your slide decks on Slideshare, they’ll be able to easily learn more about you and your research, and find you on other sites.

What to upload

You can upload your Powerpoint, PDF, Keynote, and OpenDocument slides. Powerpoint and PDF work the best, however; we’ve occasionally had problems uploading Keynote slides.

If you encounter errors uploading your Keynote or OpenDocument slides, a good workaround is to save your slides in PDF format and then upload them.

If you’re like me, you often use the Notes portion of your Powerpoint slidedeck to leave reminders to yourself to “cite So-and-so’s 2003 paper here” or to “break down definitions here for beginners.” Beware: these notes can be read by others who download your slides! Double-check your slides and their notes carefully before you upload a presentation to Slideshare.

Make uploading a snap

Next, we’re going to make it super simple for you to share your slides moving forward. To do that, we’ll need to connect your Slideshare account to the cloud storage platforms that your slides tend to live, and set a default license for all the slides you share.

Connect to the cloud

If you’re like me, you tend to create your slide decks on your desktop and then add them to Dropbox or Google Drive when they’re ready to present. (That way, you don’t have to fiddle with thumb drives when presenting.) Slideshare connects to these cloud storage services, making it very easy to import your slide decks when they’re ready to share.

To connect your accounts, click the “Upload” button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. On the next screen, click the “Upload files from Dropbox…” tile in the lower-left corner of the screen.

In the dialog box that appears, choose the cloud service or email provider you want to connect to. Connect your account, then connect any other accounts you might use in the future to store your files. When you’re finished, exit from the dialog box and–that’s it! Your accounts are connected from here on out, so it will be very easy to transfer files to Slideshare in the future.

Set a default license

An intellectual property license applied to your slides gives others a clear idea of what they can and cannot reuse the slides for.

Slideshare allows you to either keep “All Rights Reserved” for your files or select a Creative Commons license. We recommend that you use a Creative Commons license if you’re sharing research slides. Doing so will allow others to blog about your work, cite you on Wikipedia, and reuse and share your work in other ways that can increase your impacts.

To set a default license for your slides, hover over the person icon in the upper-right corner, choose “Account Settings,” then select the “Content” tab from the left-hand navigation bar.

On the “Default License for your Content” drop-down menu, select the license you’d prefer. We recommend a CC-BY license, as it allows the most reuse and sharing of your content.

Got your default license selected and your cloud storage platforms connected? Now let’s share some slides!

Get your slides online

Choose a slide deck that you’re ready to share with the world. To get it onto Slideshare, click “Upload” in the upper right corner, then find your file on your computer or cloud storage.

As your file begins to upload, you’ll be prompted to describe your file. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Category: Select the category most relevant to your talk. It’s likely the categories aren’t very useful to you; the most granular they get for science research is “Science”. That’s OK–we’ll add better information in the following fields.

• Title: Keep it the same as the title of your talk, and feel free to add the conference name and date in parenthesis, so others can see in a glance if this presentation is the one they’re looking for.

• Description: Include your talk’s abstract in this field. You’ll also want to preface your abstract with a sentence that explains when and where you gave this talk, and link to the talk’s related publication (if applicable).

• Tags: List some keywords that others in your discipline might search for. Tags will help your slides’ SEO, making them more discoverable online.

Once you’ve adequately described your slides, go ahead and finish your upload. You’ll be prompted to share your newly-uploaded slides on LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social networks. Do it!

Bonus: If you’ve got a video of your talk, you can add that, too! On your upload confirmation screen, click the “Advanced Settings” link.

On the next screen, click the “Edit YouTube video” tab, add your video’s URL, then select where you want the video to appear in the slide deck. We suggest adding it after your title slide.

Share your slides smartly

Now that you know how to get your slides online, let’s talk about all the ways you can get others’ eyeballs on them.

Some strategies for sharing your slides include:

• Using the social share buttons after you’ve uploaded your slides to share them on LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social networks

• Autotweeting your slides while you’re giving talks at conferences

• Blog about your talk after the fact, and embed your slides in your blogpost

• Connect Slideshare to LinkedIn and Impactstory, so your slides will be automatically imported and embedded in places where others might encounter your work (more on Impactstory in a later challenge)

Dig into your slides’ impact statistics

Now that you’ve got slides online and are sharing them, you can track how often they’ve been viewed and, in some cases, how often others are reusing them.

On your slide deck’s page, scroll down to find the “Statistics” tab under the description section, then click on it. Here you’ll find all the metrics related to others interest in your slides.

Some metrics you might accumulate include:

• Views on both Slideshare and other websites

• Embeds, which can tell you how many times and where others have shared your slides

• Downloads, which can tell you if others have liked your slides enough to save them to their computer

• Comments, which themselves can tell you what others think about your slides

• Likes, which as you might guess can tell you if others like your work

You can choose to receive email updates for your slides’ stats–we’ll cover that in a future challenge.

Limitations

Slideshare’s usability leaves a bit to be desired, and the amount of emails they send can border on spam. To fix the latter, go to “Account Settings” > “Email” and opt-out of any emails you don’t want to receive.

Slideshare also shares a limitation with social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn–it’s a for-profit company that sells your personal data and clutters your browser with ads. And due to its focus on sharing, the platform doesn’t give much thought to a preservation guarantees. So, always make sure your slides are backed up elsewhere.

Homework

You’ve got two tasks for your homework: get slides from your most prominent talk online, and start thinking about how you’ll share your slides for maximum visibility after future talks.

Next up: Open Access publishing to increase the impacts of your work!

If you write code for research, you’re missing out if you’re not on GitHub. GitHub is a collaborative coding website that hosts over 1 million open source projects, is increasingly being used by scientists who code, and has even hired a science guru to make the platform work better for researchers.

GitHub makes coding research software easier with its excellent version control, solid tools for collaboration, and real-time feedback and reviews. Even better, GitHub can tell you much more about the interest in, use and adaptation of your open source software and code than simply posting it to your website can.

In this guide, we’ll give you a very high-level overview of how GitHub works, and some of the benefits you can expect to see if you share your code on GitHub.

Learn the basics Git and GitHub

GitHub is built on top of the distributed version control system, Git. Git allows multiple users to edit a single piece of software code at once. Simply put, it tracks edits and allows each to be applied without overwriting the other edits.

GitHub is an open source software hosting platform that takes a lot of the pain out of using Git. Users create profiles on the site, download software to their machines, and start coding. If you’re using a Mac, GitHub’s desktop software can do most of the heavy lifting for you, making it relatively easy to push your local code to the cloud and vice versa.

Individual software projects are hosted in GitHub “repositories”. Later on in this challenge, you’ll create repositories for your code.

When you’re ready to collaborate, you can search others’ repositories, “fork” their code for your reuse, and suggest changes via “pull requests.” You can also invite others to collaborate on your code–more on that below.

Full-on Git & GitHub tutorials are beyond the scope of this post, but I encourage you to check out Lauren Orsini’s excellent GitHub primer (Part 1 & Part 2) to begin learning the basics of Git.

Set up a Github profile

Once you’ve got your local software setup, it’s time to create a GitHub profile. This is the centralized place where all of your code and contributions will be collected.

Here are some tips for creating a profile that will make your academic code shine:

• Choose a photo following the recommendations we discussed in our LinkedIn challenge
• Include a link to your professional website, so others can easily learn more about your research
• In the “Company” field, add your area of research or title alongside your institution name, so it reads “Marine Biologist at UC Santa Barbara” rather than just “UC Santa Barbara”
• Add your best code to well-documented individual repositories (more on how to do that in a moment)

By following all of these tips, you’ll have a profile that’s much more searchable on GitHub. Plus, a complete profile that showcases your authority will make you more appealing to potential collaborators.

Create repositories for your code

Once your profile is complete, it’s time to get your code online. Individual projects go into GitHub repositories. And repository-based reuse and interest metrics can help us learn about how our software is being used by others. Here are some tips for creating a great repository.

Choose a short but descriptive title for your repository: it will help with both memorability and SEO. Naming your repository after the software itself is a good choice.

Create a killer Readme file: you want your code to be reusable, don’t you? Documentation is a huge boost to reusability, and a  Readme file is the best place to keep your documentation. The Frontier Group recommends including the following:

• The name of the project
• The name and contact details of the client and any 3rd party vendors
• The names of the developers on the project
• A brief description of the project, you should include the answer to the age-old question “What problem is this project solving?”
• An outline of the technologies in the project. e.g.: Framework (Rails/iOS/Android/Gameboy Colour), programming language, database, ORM.
• Links to any related projects (e.g.: Is this a Rails API that has corresponding iOS and Android clients?)
• Links to online tools related to the application (e.g.: Links to the Basecamp project, a link to the dropbox where all the wireframes are stored, a link to the Pivotal Tracker project)

Consider also adding information about the grant that funded the development of this code, and links to any related publications. To increase your SEO, try to also include keywords that others who might be interested in your software might search for.

Choose an open license: In a separate License.md file, include a license that clearly explains what rights you’ll allow others who want to reuse and adapt your code. There are strong feelings about open which open licenses are most appropriate, and pros and cons for each that are worth looking into, but we prefer relatively permissive licenses like the MIT license (in fact, that’s the license Impactstory’s code is under).

Add collaborators: Invite anyone who has contributed to developing the code to be a collaborator on your personal code. For code that’s not yours but instead is part of the work an organization or institution does, you can also create an “organization” for code repositories. For example, Matt Jones belongs to the rOpenSci and DataONE organizations on GitHub, as we see on the left. For more information on adding others to a GitHub organization, see this guide.

GitHub for sharing data

Some researchers like using GitHub for storing and working with numerical data. It has the advantage of being stored in a repository alongside the code that’s used for analysis, making your research project into a single, neatly-packaged reproducible object.

For some examples of how others use GitHub for data, check out Carl Boettiger’s R workflow, Caitlin Rivers’ Ebola data archive, and OKFN’s government data  archive.

Some drawbacks to using GitHub to store your data include its lack of solid preservation strategy and that it doesn’t specialize in one kind of data like repositories like the Protein Data Bank do, making it difficult to find data to reuse.

Mint DOIs for your code

Now that your code (and possibly also your data) is online, let’s make it easier to track its impacts.

A challenge for tracking the scholarly impact of research software is a lack of persistent identifiers that are available for code. That’s why Mozilla Science, GitHub, Zenodo, and Figshare partnered to begin issuing DOIs for code repositories on GitHub, which are often included in citations in publications.

To learn how to create a DOI for your code, check out this guide to connecting Zenodo to a GitHub repository to mint a DOI.

Once you’ve gotten DOIs for your repositories, put them into each of your repositories’ Readme files alongside a preferred citation. It’ll make it easier for others to cite your code in their papers.

Sit back and watch the forks & stars roll in

Citations are far from the only type of impact you can start to accrue if your code is made openly available on GitHub. GitHub has some good metrics that can tell you how your code is being reused, commented upon, and so on–in real time. Some GitHub metrics to know about include:

• Stars: some GitHub users “star” repositories as a means of showing appreciation for your work; others use them as a bookmark, so they can find and revisit your code more easily.
• Forks: a “fork” is created when another user copies one of your repositories so they can explore and experiment without affecting your original code. It’s a good signal of reuse.
• Pull requests: When a user wants to suggest changes to your code, they’ll issue a pull request. The number of pull request and identities of contributors can be good indicators of how collaborative your work is and who your high-profile collaborators are.

Each of these metrics can tell a more nuanced story of the use of your code in your discipline than citations alone can.

Limitations

Despite its popularity in some circles, GitHub has notable limitations. The biggest is that learning Git can be too high a barrier for entry for some to overcome.

GitHub’s filesize limitations and usability are drawbacks for others. Moreover, the problems with GitHub’s search function make it difficult to search for code or rank by relevancy when searching code documentation.  A good workaround for this is to just use a regular search engine like Google.

And, finally, GitHub is a for-profit company. They reserve the right to delete your code and data at any time, for any reason, making the long-term storage of code a questionable proposition.

Homework

First things first: read these excellent tutorials [1] [2] [3] [4] and practice using Git and GitHub. Once you’ve got your footing, it’s time to get your code online.

Deposit at least one of your best known software projects or code snippets to GitHub repositories. Then, mint a DOI for it and add your preferred citation to the top of your Readme.md file.

Finally, get social! GitHub’s major strength lies in its social networking features, so  try a few Google searches to see if you can find and follow researchers in your field. Bonus points for exploring their repositories to see if there’s any code you can borrow/fork for future projects.

Tomorrow, you’ll have it a bit easier: we’re going to get you onto Slideshare!

Data is second only to journal articles in terms of importance to science communication and publishing–it’s the rocks from which diamonds are refined. And as a researcher, chances are you’ve got research data lying around on your hard drive or server.

Yet a lot of research data never sees the light of day. It used to be difficult to make data available to others, so researchers didn’t unless required to by journals or funder mandates.

But new research has found that by putting your research data online, you’ll become up to 30% more highly cited than if you kept your data hidden. Open research data also leads to more replicable studies, and is important to the quality of science overall. And advancements in technology have made it easier than ever to cheaply preserve and make your data Open Access.

In today’s challenge, we’ll share three easy ways to make your data available online: Open Repositories (ORs) like Figshare and Zenodo; Disciplinary Repositories (DRs) like Dryad and ICPSR; and Institutional Repositories (IRs).

Why post to a data repository?

A common way for many researchers to share their data over the years has been to submit it as a supplementary file to a journal article. But publishers are beginning to encourage scientists to deposit their data to repositories instead.

Publishers recognize that repositories of all persuasions are fantastic places to post your research data. That’s because of two standard features for most repositories: high-quality preservation options and persistent identifiers for your data.

Preservation is a no-brainer–if you’re entrusting your data to a repository, you want to know that it will be around until you decide to remove it.

Persistent identifiers are important because they allow your data to be found if the URL for your data changes, or it’s transferred to another repository when your repository is shuttered, and so on. And with persistent identifiers like DOIs, it’s easy to track citations, shares, mentions, and other reuse and discussion of your data on the Web.

There are several different types of repository that can host your data depending upon your institution and discipline. Let’s dig into the different types of repositories and what each does best.

Figshare, Zenodo, and other open repositories

Open repositories like Figshare and Zenodo are repositories that anyone can use, regardless of institutional affiliation, to preserve any type of scholarly output they want. Here are specific advantages and disadvantages of two open repositories.

Pros

Figshare offers free deposits for open data up to 250 MB in file size. They issue persistent identifiers called DOIs for datasets. Users can “version” their data as simply as uploading updated files, and can easily embed Figshare datasets in other websites and blogs by copying and pasting a simple code. Other users can comment on datasets and download citation files to their reference managers for later use. Figshare offers preservation backed by CLOCKSS, a highly-trusted, community-governed archive used by repositories around the world. And you get basic information about the number of views and shares on social media your dataset has gotten to date.

Zenodo also offers free data deposits and issues DOIs for your datasets. Much like Figshare, the non-profit makes citation information for datasets available in BibTeX, EndNote, and a variety of other library and reference manager formats. Users can add highly detailed metadata for their files–much more than Figshare currently allows–which can aid in discoverability. Other Zenodo users can comment on your files. And best of all, Zenodo makes it easy to sign up with your ORCID identifier or GitHub account. (If you don’t have either yet, no worries! We’re going to cover them in upcoming challenges.)

Both repositories have open APIs, making them very interoperable with other systems., and they are both user-friendly and fun to use.

Cons

For some, Figshare’s funding model is a serious drawback; it’s a for-profit company funded by Digital Science, whose parent company, Macmillian Publisher, is the keeper of the Nature Publishing Group empire.

Zenodo’s preservation plan is less robust than Figshare’s, and currently Zenodo can only host files 2 GB or less in size. Zenodo also lacks public pageview and download statistics, meaning that you can’t track the popularity or reuse of the data you submit to the archive.

Dryad, ICPSR, and other disciplinary repositories

Disciplinary repositories offer a way to share specialized research data with relevant communities. They offer many of the same features as IRs and ORs, but often with special features for disciplinary data.

Pros

Disciplinary repositories like KNB and ICPSR often allow users to use subject-specific metadata schema that enhance discoverability. They are focal points for their disciplines, meaning that your data will more likely be seen by those understand it. Repositories like those in the DataONE network are interoperable with the software that you and other researchers already use to collect and analyze data, making it super easy to deposit data as part of your regular workflow. Depending on the repository, they might offer DOIs for data you’ve deposited.

Cons

Not all disciplinary repositories allow you to deposit large datasets. Some do not offer DOIs. And occasionally, grant-funded subject repositories that don’t have sustainable business models shut down after their funding runs out.

Protein Data Bank, Genbank & other datatype-specific repositories

In some disciplines, entire repositories exist just for data of particular formats. Some examples include the RCSB’s Protein Data Bank for 3D shapes of proteins, nucleic acids, and complex assemblies; Genbank for DNA sequences; and EMDataBank for 3D electron microscopy density maps, atomic models, and associated metadata.

Pros

If there’s a repository for the datatype you work with, your best bet is often to deposit it there. By virtue of being a hub for disciplinary data, datatype repositories are often frequented by others in your field who are doing similar research–an ideal audience of those you’d want to see and reuse your data. Datatype repositories often offer highly-specific metadata and search options, making it easy for others in your field to find your data.

Cons

Datatype repositories cater to a very small subset of data formats, and can sometimes lack linkages to the publications and other datasets that give them much-needed context. Some datatype repositories are inactive, having been abandoned after their funding ran out, or because of a lack of use by other scientists, or for a host of other reasons. Be careful to check whether the datatype repository you’re interested in using is regularly updated.

Institutional repositories

Institutional repositories are platforms where an university’s faculty and graduate students can preserve their research data and other scholarly outputs.

Pros

Institutional repositories are often free to use, allow for the addition of both basic and complex data descriptions, and usually issue persistent identifiers called Handles that others can use to cite and find your data easily. (Currently, IRs that mint DOIs are harder to come by.) Some IRs even offer unlimited data storage, meaning you can store your terabytes worth of data for free.

And by virtue of being backed by a university and administered by librarians, they’ve got a degree of trust that money can’t buy; many universities have been around for a hundred or more years, librarians have been stewards of the scholarly record since the times of the Ancient Library of Alexandria, and both will likely be around long after the Googles of the world have been shuttered.

Cons

What IRs offer in trust, they lack in flexibility and control. Many IRs have strict requirements for who can sign up and deposit research data, what data formats they’ll support over time, and if and how you can edit your files and descriptive information.

Other issues with many (but not all) institutional repositories include their lack of features for collaboration, inability to “version” datasets, unclear licensing advice for open data needs, and a lack of APIs for interoperability with other systems. Many also only use a very general metadata standard, Dublin Core, and don’t support domain or datatype-specific metadata fields and controlled vocabularies.

Perhaps the biggest drawback? No one goes to IRs looking for data, so you’re entirely reliant on search engines for discoverability.

Data repository limitations

In addition to some of the drawbacks addressed above, the biggest limitation to the idea of making your data openly available is that not everyone can do it! If you work with sensitive data–defined by ANDS as “data that can be used to identify an individual, species, object, or location that introduces a risk of discrimination, harm, or unwanted attention”–you often can’t post your data openly online.

That said, some repositories like ICPSR do index sensitive data, making it available to registered users. The availability of a metadata record alone can sometimes be enough to cite sensitive data, and so it’s possible that you can still get cited, even if your data isn’t open access. But we don’t recommend keeping your data behind a login or other barrier if you don’t have to.

Unsure if your data is “sensitive”? Check out Purdue University Library’s guide on sensitive data, which can help you identify it and all applicable laws and regulations.

Homework

For today’s homework, we’re going to get your data online.

Register for an Open Repository

Explore data hosted on Figshare and Zenodo, then choose and sign up for an account on the platform of your choice. Deposit at least one data set to the service. It can be a copy of supplementary data you’ve posted alongside a journal article, raw data, or data from a dead-end project you’ve never published.

Be sure to add as much descriptive information as possible during the deposit. It’ll make your data useful to those who look at your data, and also more “Googleable”–both repositories are well-indexed by search engines.

Choose a disciplinary repository

There are thousands of repositories where you could possibly deposit data from your field. Ask a trusted colleague for a recommendation or check out the Re3Data guide for a comprehensive list of subject repositories.

Once you’ve found one that suits your needs, register for it and deposit a dataset or two.

Explore relevant datatype-specific repositories

Ask a colleague or your advisor what the best repositories are for the data formats you tend to create. Sign up for each that you think will be the most relevant to your work, explore some of the other datasets on the site, and deposit a dataset or two of your own. And just like you did for the previous two deposits, make sure you add great descriptive information, which can help others understand your data.

Got an idea of what repository you like best? Great! Next time you’ve got a dataset that you want to share with the world, do it!

Tomorrow, we’ll explore GitHub for sharing your scientific code and data.