Are you missing out at conferences? You might be if you’re just attending and not connecting.

Conferences are a fantastic place to meet the biggest names in your field, make connections that can lead to later jobs, and “gain insight into some of the ‘less-obvious’ aspects of how things work in the academic world — various norms, conventions, as well as some of the social and political dimensions.”

Conferences also are a great opportunity to be a helpful expert, connecting the dots via social media for other attendees as well as people who are monitoring the meeting from afar.

In today’s challenge, you’re going to learn some ways to hustle at conferences and make plans for future meetings.

But first things first: you’ve got to attend the right conferences.

Choose the right conference

There can be dozens of conferences aimed at researchers in your field. Here’s how to find your best options:

Ask a trusted colleague or advisor: they can tell you what the most popular conferences are, or the ones that are most appropriate for someone in your area of study or stage in your career. Take their recommendations with a grain of salt, though: if you’re studying something they’re unfamiliar with or working on an interdisciplinary problem, they might not know of all the best opportunities.

Browse scholarly society websites: some of the most important conferences are organized by scholarly societies. So check out the websites of any scholarly societies that are big in your field to see if they have annual meetings or related events listed.

Search Lanyrd: Lanyrd is a platform for announcing your intent to attend and speak at meetings, and discover meetings in your area of expertise. You can sign up for free by connecting your Twitter or LinkedIn accounts, and Lanyrd will helpfully show you what meetings others in your network are attending. You can also search the platform by subject area.

Search WikiCFP or Nature Events: both of these sites provide comprehensive lists of science meetings from around the world. You can browse by subject area on both, and Nature Events even lets you export conference information to your calendar. These platforms are less social media-oriented than Lanyrd.

Once you’ve got your meeting options, how can you know the right ones are to attend? Science recruiter David Jensen suggests four filters to use when deciding whether to attend a conference:

• Relevance of the topic to your current work and future goals. If you have the option, choose a meeting in your current or future field with a broad range of attendees, including people from industry and government.
• The quality of the speakers. The quality of the speakers determines the quality of the audience, which determines the quality of the networking opportunity.
• Visibility. While you can make a ton of contacts at a big meeting if you do it right, you’ll be more visible at a smaller meeting. An opportunity to present at a more intimate meeting is often very meaningful.
• Can you afford it? …At a big meeting, you can skip the presentations and get an inexpensive “exhibits only” badge. Ask the organizers if they need volunteers to work the social events desk or help attendees with their projection equipment. Many meetings have reduced rates for students, and some even have awards to cover the cost of meeting-related travel.

Got some conferences in mind now? Good–now let’s dig into how you can make the most of ‘em.

Plan ahead

Dig into the session schedules available on the conference website, and try to identify any “must see” talks by topic well ahead of time. It’ll keep you from missing out on important subjects related to your work, and provide valuable opportunities to make meaningful connections.

In addition to searching the schedule by topic, keep an eye out for the names of researchers you want to meet. Conferences provide many opportunities to connect: poster sessions, before and after presentations, at cocktail hours, and so on. If there’s anyone you want to meet who’s presenting, this meeting will be your chance!

You can also find out who’s just planning to attend by connecting your Lanyrd account with Twitter and LinkedIn. Lanyrd will search for members of your network and let you know what meetings they’ve RSVP’d to. Of course, this only works if your network is on Lanyrd. An alternative is to ask your colleagues via social media whether they plan to attend.

Make some dates

Once you have a sense of who’s going to attend, reach out via email or social media to arrange an informal meetup. The Next Scientist’s Julio Peironcely suggests cold-emailing with the following information:

Use for your email a self-explanatory title (don’t just say “Hello”). Use something like “Meeting at conference XXX dinner to discuss BLABLA?”.

The first paragraph of your email is your elevator pitch, short and to the point. [More on that in a moment.] After reading the first paragraph, the scientist you are [contacting] should already know if he [sic] wants to meet or not. Leave the details for the rest of the email…

The rest of the email could contain some of your achievements. Describe also what’s in for the other person to meet with you.

For contacting colleagues you’re already familiar with, 99u suggests reaching out to your contacts beforehand and proposing “grabbing an early breakfast together, lunch, or drinks during the conference. Encourage each person to invite 1-2 people that they deeply respect, thus broadening the potential of the meeting.”

Prepare an elevator speech

Consider this scenario: you find yourself standing in line for coffee with the conference’s keynote speaker, who also happens to be someone you’d love to collaborate with. How do you pique her interest in the 30 seconds you’ve got her full attention?

That’s where an elevator speech comes in. An elevator speech (also called an “elevator pitch”) is a short, practiced explanation of who you are and what you study. Having a pitch ready for situations like the one described above can save you from fumbling when you’re put on the spot.

Biologist Catherine Searle proposes the following framework for creating your elevator pitch:

• Introduction – Explain who you are. This is sometimes unnecessary if you have already struck up a conversation.

• Hook – What is the major question/problem you study? You can also start with an observation (e.g. I noticed this pattern in communities with more predators and I thought that predation could be driving dynamics).

• Solution – How are you answering this question? For example, you could describe your use of field surveys, experiments or modelling. You may also talk about why you use a particular system.

• Summary and benefits of this knowledge – What have you found? Why is this work useful? What are you looking into next? Try to draw it back to your hook.

• The stage of your career (optional). For example: “I’ll be finishing my PhD this spring and will be looking for a postdoc position.” This can be useful if you are about to transition to a new stage in your career; the listener may be a potential advisor or collaborator.

Use this framework to write out a brief elevator speech, then practice giving it. Practicing will help you eliminate awkward phrases, nail the flow, and memorize your main points. Remember to keep it short! You can always elaborate incrementally after you’ve got their interest.

If you’ll be presenting a poster at a future meeting, you’ll also want to create and practice a poster pitch, too.

“Never eat alone”

CC-BY-SA Thomas Wanhoff

There are heaps of opportunities to meet others at conferences, and some of the best happen around the dinner table: formal conference meals, informal “birds of a feather” lunch meetups, and even impromptu “tweetups” for coffee or drinks.

Conference-hosted meals can give you a chance to become acquainted with people you otherwise might not meet. Worried about the mechanics of meeting new people? Julio Peironcely suggests simply asking if an empty seat is taken, sitting down, and starting with small talk about the conference food before moving on to discussing research.

He also offers the following “can’t fail” questions you can use to keep the conversation from stalling before you finish your first course:

• What is your research about?
• Do you have some exciting results so far?
• How is it to do research in your group? Pros, cons?
• How is it to live in your city?
• What were the toughest moments in your PhD?
• What are your scientific plans?

Meeting organizers might also designate tables for “birds of a feather” discussions, so you can meet others interested in similar topics. (That’s how I met Jason face-to-face for the first time–at a “birds of a feather” luncheon about altmetrics!) This can be an easy way to find like-minded colleagues.

You can also use mealtime to arrange informal meetings with colleagues, including those you emailed in the “Make some dates” step. Use conference downtime to arrange meetings over coffee or drinks; arranging an impromptu “tweetup” can also be a fun way to meet new people.

The title of this section is taken from the popular networking book, Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. I highly recommend it for learning more networking strategies.

Attend the poster session

Poster sessions are great for meeting people. Think about it: a room full of scientists standing near their posters for hours, hungering to talk to others about their research. It’s the perfect time to network and a good place to refine your networking skills. Use the prepared questions suggested above to get the conversation started. And be prepared to hand out business cards to those you meet who could be good collaborators. (More on business cards below.)

Carpe colloquium

You read that right: seize the conference! Take opportunities for socialization that arise, even if they don’t fit into the rubric of what you’re “supposed to do.” I once made a new friend and valuable contact at a New Orleans-based conference by hunting down beignets when I was supposed to be in a talk.

You should do the same. Forego a keynote presentation to do some impromptu hacking on research code; strike up conversations with poster presenters and invite them to grab a coffee when their poster session ends; linger in the conference hallway to continue a debate that started over lunch; and just basically make the most of your time at the conference by building great relationships.

Curate the conference for others

By tweeting and blogging about the meetings you attend, you can not only recap important sessions for other attendees, but also share information with those who were unable to attend.

Liveblogging and livetweeting from sessions are popular ways to curate content as the meeting unfolds; you can also recap the entire conference after the meeting ends.

Keep in mind that some conferences have banned social media coverage of their meetings, and some presenters might not want you to share their findings before they have a chance to publish them in a peer-reviewed journal. Check before you blog (and tweet)!

Business cards

Be sure to bring business cards with you when you attend conferences. (And yes, even grad students should bring cards!) They’re a quick and easy way to share your contact information with others.

You can order business cards online at Moo.com, or hit up your local copy shop, which often offers competitive prices. Moo cards have design templates, so if you’re not artistic, you don’t have to worry about designing anything–you can just choose a design, type in your contact information, and click “Buy.”

One downside to these cards is that it can be easy to forget the face that goes with a name once you return from a conference. 99u proposes beating this by writing “action items” on the back of any cards you collect; for example, “Add on LinkedIn” for a generic new acquaintance or “Introduce to Dr. Smith – reagents hookup” for a friendly vendor you intend to follow up with.

Always follow up

You don’t have to do this for everyone you meet, but for the best connections you made at a conference, it’s nice to send an email saying, “Hello, I really liked your talk” or “Thanks for the constructive criticism about my poster, it will help me improve my study.”

The Addgene blog points out that it’s also useful to stay in touch after the meeting so you can meet up at next year’s conference. “Once is just a meeting, but having lunch twice turns a stranger into a friendly colleague.”

You can use LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media platforms for ongoing interactions–the occasional comment, “like” or retweet will keep you at the top of their mind. Do it while you’re still at the conference, or right away when you get home. Otherwise, it’s easy to forget! And that’d be a waste.

Challenges

Hustling at conferences can be difficult if you’re an introvert. (Heck, it can sometimes be hard if you’re an extrovert!) I’d suggest starting small–maybe doing only 2 or 3 things I’ve suggested above during your next meeting–and building up from there. Check out The Postdoc Experience blog for more tips aimed at introverts who need to network.

Another challenge comes in the shape of a cocktail glass. If you don’t drink, booze-based networking opportunities can perpetuate a culture of exclusion, making it very hard to connect with other researchers in a meaningful way. You can avoid this issue by joining in the event without drinking (to the extent it’s comfortable to you), planning ahead to informal meetings, and taking full advantage of “birds of a feather” meals and coffee breaks to socialize.

Homework

Unless you’re attending a conference tomorrow, you won’t be able to act on the advice in this guide immediately.

Instead, read this guide carefully and start preparing for the next meeting you’re going to attend. Plan out who you’ll try to connect with, prepare your elevator pitch, order some business cards, and so on. That way, you can come out swinging when those conference doors open.

PS

Tomorrow is American Thanksgiving, so we’ll be taking the day off from the Impact Challenge. See you on Friday!

Listservs–group email lists related to a particular subject–are a relatively low-tech way to get your research to a broader audience of your peers than social media can. Even the most traditional, technology-averse researchers can often be found on listservs, which is a big advantage for the medium over Twitter, Academia.edu, and other academic platforms.

Why are listservs so popular? Because all you have to do to reach hundreds, if not thousands, of your colleagues is send an email. This means all of the interaction happens in an environment you are already very well-acquainted with: your email inbox.

Scientists all over the world use listservs in many ways: to pose questions to other experts in their field; to share new research that’s of interest to their discipline; to announce conferences and calls for papers; and to support one another virtually.

By being an active and responsive member of listservs in your field, you can make a name for yourself as a helpful expert. And this in turn can help other scientists learn about you and your research.

In today’s challenge, you’ll learn the best three ways to use listservs to make a name for yourself and share your research.

First, let’s get you onto a listserv or two.

Finding the right listserv

Listservs come in countless flavors. They can be related to any subject under the sun–from entire disciplines like this computer science listserv to as specific a topic as this confocal microscopy listserv. They also cater to speakers of many languages and scientists at all stages of their careers.

So, how can you find the right listserv for you? Here are the three best ways to hone in on your listserv(s) of choice, ranging from easiest to most difficult:

• Search your scholarly society’s homepage: Many scholarly societies host listservs dedicated to researchers at particular points in their career (student, postdoc, faculty, and so on) or the many sub-disciplines within their field. Browse the homepages of the most popular scholarly societies in your discipline to see if they host listservs. You don’t necessarily have to be a dues-paying member of a society to join, but oftentimes you do. These listservs tend to be the most widely used in many disciplines.
• Ask a colleague: I’ve always found it helpful to ask colleagues what the most useful listservs they follow are. Colleagues at a similar point in their careers as you are can give the best recommendations: they’ll tell you the best listservs to follow for job announcements, where to find the best new publications, and what listserv audiences are especially kind and engaged when answering questions. And mentors or senior researchers can help you find the listservs that the bigwigs in your field monitor.
• “Deep googling”: The final way to find relevant listservs is via search engine. Brainstorm keywords related to your discipline and also your specific area of study, a particular type of analysis, and so on. Then search for the term (plus the words “listserv”, “google group,” or “email list”) on your favorite search engine and see what turns up.

No matter whether the listservs you find are expert recommended or discovered by searching, you should always evaluate whether they’ll be right for you. For each, take a look at the listserv’s archive. You can determine their relevancy to you by researching:

• How active the listserv’s members are (if no one’s posting to it regularly, the listserv is likely dead in the water),
• The quality of who’s posting (are the field’s “big names” contributing or only researchers you’ve never heard of?), and
• The type of content being shared (is it only “call for papers” announcements or are others also discussing and sharing regularly?).

Ways to use your listserv

Once you’ve subscribed, you should first “lurk” for a few weeks. That is, just read through the messages that are posted without responding. Lurking will help you get a sense of what type of content is regularly posted and how others tend to interact (are they curt, kind, etc?). The listserv’s guidelines will often spell out what can and cannot be posted, as well.

There are three main ways professional listservs can be used to forge meaningful connections with others: sharing content, posing & answering questions, and inviting debate.

Sharing content

Any time you are reading a paper that might be of interest to others in your field, email the paper’s citation to the listserv, along with a link to where the paper can be found (an Open Access version is particularly helpful), and what you liked about it. Others will appreciate the recommendation; it helps them sort the wheat from the chaff when deciding what papers to read.

And papers aren’t the only type content you can share: links to news articles, conference websites, datasets, open source software, and anything else you think others in your field would want to know about are good things to send along.

Promoting your own research is encouraged, too. If you’ve recently published a study (or created software, released data, etc) that’d be of interest to others in your field, send it to your listserv. But don’t only send your own work along: it can come across as self-promoting, and it won’t have as much weight as if you’re well-known for sharing quality content in general.

Posing & answering questions

Listservs can be a good source of crowd-sourced knowledge. Researchers often post questions to professional listservs along the lines of:

• “What’s the melting point of isoxazole? I can’t find it in Reaxys.”
• “I’m trying to find that Axel and Smith paper from the early 2000’s related to alluvial flow, does anyone have the proper citation?”
• “I’m new to the field and looking for a few good studies on GIS, engineering, and rock formations along the upper Mississippi River. Any recommendations?”

So, don’t be afraid to pose thoughtful questions to your listserv. Any disciplinary question you’d ask a colleague is appropriate for posting to a listserv.

And you should also answer questions that others pose. People appreciate helpfulness. Connecting others with the knowledge they seek will make a name for you as both knowledgeable and charitable.

Inviting debate

Debate can be both challenging and super rewarding. It’s “challenging” in that it can be difficult to do diplomatically over email. It’s “super rewarding” in that, if done well, your name will be come synonymous with smart, well-argued rhetoric (at least for members of the listserv).

A good way to invite debate is to share and comment upon a paper you’ve recently read. Others will often chime in with their own thoughts and questions; respond carefully and thoughtfully to everyone who has replied to you. Keep in mind that the point of inviting debate is to add value rather than flaunt your own intellectual prowess. No one likes a know-it-all 🙂

Limitations

Listservs have some noteworthy drawbacks. Chief among them is the volume of email they tend to generate–it’s often too much for subscribers to handle. You can mitigate this by either creating an email filter that keeps messages out of your inbox, or opting to receive the listserv messages in a digest format that’s sent daily or weekly (rather than one-by-one).

Email volume can make participation in listservs challenging. It can be difficult to keep up with the onslaught of messages, especially if you’re subscribed to more than one listserv. “Batching” your responses can help you save time–set aside time once a week to read through messages and respond to any where you’d add value.

The final limitation to listservs is that they can sometimes be politically tricky to navigate. It’s not uncommon for a message to be misinterpreted and cause hurt feelings or, worse, start a “flamewar”. And researchers have found that gender differences can be exacerbated by listservs.

In this case, knowledge is power. If you receive a response that’s rude, take a step back and remind yourself that

a) email can be a challenging medium, and it’s possible that your interpretation of a message is different from the sender’s intent;
b) taking the high road is always a “win”–you’ll retain your professionalism, even if others don’t; and
c) you don’t have to respond to messages immediately.

Sometimes waiting 24 hours can help lessen the sting you’re feeling and make it easier to compose a thoughtful, measured response to even the harshest criticisms.

How to unsubscribe

There will likely come a time when you’ll want off of a listserv. Don’t email the entire listserv with a request for removal–it’s a common mistake that pollutes thousands of inboxes with unwanted email.

Instead, look for unsubscribe information at the bottom of your email, or perform a web search to find unsubscribe instructions instead. Sometimes, unsubscribing can be done with the click of a button on the listserv website; other times, you’ll need to email the list moderator to be removed.

Homework

Find, join, and start lurking on at least three listservs that are relevant to your area of study.

Then, set up filters in your email, so the listserv email you get is channeled into a folder, away from your inbox. Here’s how to set up notifications for Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.

And your final task is to batch your reading and responding to listservs. Scan your listserv emails at least once a week at a designated time and respond to any conversations or questions that you think you can add value to.

Your next Challenge is to get the word out about your research to the press. Doing so can help you gain wide exposure for your articles and, in the case of applied research, get your studies into the hands of patients, policy makers, and other populations that need it the most.

Today, we’ll cover how to connect with your university’s press office to get your work to the mainstream media, how and why to build relationships with journalists, and how to prepare for a great media interview. But first–what is a press officer and what do they do?

What the heck is a university press officer?

University press officers help you communicate your studies to the public. They usually do this via press releases, which filter and translate your super technical papers into language the public can understand. After all, “the average reader knows what bleach is but won’t connect their experience with your article on sodium hypochlorite if you don’t clearly state that what you’re working with in lay terms” (FigureOne blog).

And press officers often have valuable contacts in the mainstream media, which makes it much easier to get your articles coverage in newspapers, the radio, and internet publications.

It’s good to recognize if you’re dealing with a salesman” up front–you may want to reign them in a bit, providing some of the filtering and ‘this is why this matters’ parts of your research on your own. if you’ve got a journalist, though, you can leave more of the decision on what’s press-release-worthy to them

Be aware of “salesman” press officers. These are press officers that just want to get your story into the news, even if it’s misrepresented or irrelevant to the public. Research communications consultant Dennis Meredith points out that working with “salesman” press officers will likely just get your work increasingly ignored over time.

Instead, be on the lookout for “journalist” press officers–someone who understands the value of nuanced and well-placed coverage of your research. Working with “journalist” press officers can help get your work better, more relevant coverage, according to Meredith.

It’s good to recognize if you’re dealing with a “salesman” up front–you may want to reign them in a bit, providing some of the filtering and ‘this is why this matters’ parts of your research on your own. If you’ve got a “journalist,” though, you can leave more of the decision on what’s press-release-worthy to them.

You can build relationships with journalists, too

Not everyone will have a press officer available to help them get their research to the press. It’s useful to build one-on-one relationships with journalists for this reason. Ecologist Jacqueline Gill suggests,

The next time you read a particularly good (or bad) piece, make a note of the byline. Keep a running list of people whose coverage you like, and those you’d rather not talk to…Join Twitter…and start following science writers. Participate in the online conversations, in blogs,  article comments, and in social media.

Gill also says that scientists shouldn’t be afraid to approach journalists directly or, in some cases, “be your own science journalist.” Check out her blog post on the subject for more practical ideas.

What warrants a press release?

Usually only research that would be of interest to lay persons is considered worthy of a press release. Oxford University Press defines “press release-worthy” as:

[a] journal article [that] contain[s] one or more of the following:

• New research in the field of study
• Research that sheds a new perspective or alternate perspective on research that received news coverage in the past
• Research that relates to current news stories and interest, e.g. Syrian politics
• Publication coincides with an anniversary or date of interest
• Research in the public interest, e.g. elderly care abuse or pregnancy screening
• A call to action or a definitive statement of change, e.g. ’the government should do this…’

And it’s usually only a journal article that warrants a press release. One study found that “71% to 83% of the respondents agreed that ‘scientists should communicate research findings to the general public only after they have been published in a scientific journal.’”

Some people feel that any paper published in a glam mag–that is, Nature, Cell, Science, PNAS, and other big-name journals–is worthy of a press release. But no matter where you’ve published, if you’ve written an article that you think could be of interest to the public, contact your press officer to see if they think it’s worth publicizing.

What should be in a press release?

The main job of your press release should be to get the attention of journalists. After all, they’re the critical bridge between you and the public.  Liz Neeley of COMPASS points out,

Done well, press releases can offer researchers the chance to tell their stories on their own terms and alert interested reporters to a story they won’t want to miss. Done poorly, they are usually ignored – and, at worst, they can even distort the story of the science they attempt to share.

Luckily, you’ve got a great source of material to work from: the outline of the video abstract you’ve created for the Impact Challenge!

A title: short and relevant

Make it snappy but not eye-rollingly cutesy or so pithy that it doesn’t make sense. One way to do that is to consider what your paper’s title might have been if you had written it for a newspaper rather than an academic journal. Your title also shouldn’t overreach the data, according to Liz Neeley of COMPASS.

Include an embargo, if needed

If your paper isn’t yet published, you may be required to include an embargo date and time at the top of your press release, so journalists know to hold the news until you’re ready. Check with your journal to learn if they impose embargoes, and if so, what they are.

Then you gotta hook ‘em

Your press release, like your video abstract, should include a hook that quickly summarizes why your research is relevant to their lives. Oxford University Press recommends that your hook includes “an identifiable audience, main point of focus for the release, and headline for the article.” Another way to think about your hook is a 1-2 sentence explanation of your research that inspires your audience to continue reading.

Writing a solid body for your press release

In Dennis Meredith’s excellent “Anatomy of a news release,” he outlines important components of the rest of your press release:

• An inverted pyramid style that summarizes the key concepts first, with background relegated to later in the release
• Concise explanations of the scientific concepts
• Caveats about the research
• A broader perspective on how the findings fit into the research field
• Full credit to all the participants
• Reader-friendly use of technical terms. For example, definitions on first usage and use of only those terms necessary to tell the story
• Vivid analogies and descriptions of concepts and experiments

Check out Dennis’s full list of recommendations on his website.

Contact information

Journalists are going to want quotes and possibly even longform interviews, so be sure to include the lead author’s contact information or that of an agreed-upon media representative from the research team.

Awesome images and other media

AAAS’s Bethany Halford points out that “people like looking at cool stuff.” If you’ve got images, video, figures, or other graphics from your study that’d make your press release visually appealing, include them!

How to prepare yourself for talking to the media

Assuming you’ve nailed your press release, journalists are now knocking on your door, wanting to interview you about your research. Here’s how you can make sure you have a successful interview.

Identify your main objective

What is the single most important message you want those who read or hear your interview to come away with? AAAS recommends that you “prepare a single communication objective and two or three secondary points you want to make,” and I’d agree. Keeping a single message in mind can keep you from veering off-topic or getting lost in the details of your study when talking with a journalist.

Flesh out your talking points

You’ll need to also have talking points ready, so you don’t repeat yourself when attempting to communicate your take-home message. The FigureOne blog explains:

It’s important to have a set of talking points prepared ahead of time so you can clearly spell out the important details of your work without too much fumbling. The fastest way to get misquoted is to be unclear when you describe what you did and why it matters.

The American Geophysical Union has a helpful worksheet that you can use to formulate your talking points; complete it and keep it handy when conducting your interview.

Practice, practice, practice

The more you practice, the better you’ll get at artfully explaining your talking points. Have a friend or colleague help you rehearse, if necessary. And keep Ed Yong’s advice about giving comments to journalists in mind when rehearsing.

Say yes to the press!

Now that you’re well-practiced, it’s time to start talking to journalists about your work.

Be sure to respond quickly to press inquiries. Journalists are often on deadlines that require you to respond within hours, not days or weeks. Rearrange your schedule if necessary so you can check your email and phone messages more often than normal, and make time to respond to inquiries you receive.

The Scripps Research Institute points out that you don’t have to respond immediately to all inquiries, however:

When you receive a media request, feel free to ask the reporter for background: What is the focus of the piece? Who else are you speaking with? What is the format (eg. live or taped)? If an interview request catches you by surprise, arrange to call the reporter back so you have time to gather your thoughts and do a Google search on the reporter, outlet and other background.

Trust your gut when deciding to respond to journalists based on their reputation and the publication they’re interviewing you for.

Now get out there and start talking! Give your interviews, monitor the media for the final results, and give yourself a pat on the back for doing the complicated and sometimes intimidating work of speaking with the press!

After you’ve finished interviewing, you can offer to fact-check articles and be generally available for follow-up questions. But don’t expect the right to review the articles before they go to press; that’s just not how science journalism works.

The very real fear of misrepresentation

Many scientists are wary of talking to journalists for fear that they’ll be misquoted or their research will be misrepresented through errors or omissions in news articles. Science argues that researchers have more control over this issue than they may realize:

“The quality of an article does … not only depend on the skills of the journalist but also on the source,” Scherzler continues. “One should, therefore, do everything in one’s power to ensure that the journalist understands what one is trying to communicate and that he has received all the information required for a good article.”

You won’t be able to prevent all errors, but by being a well-prepared and rehearsed interview subject and working with a press officer that’s an expert in media affairs, you can nip some of these issues in the bud.

Also, keep in mind that there’s a difference between lack of precision and outright misrepresentation. Often scientists need to get comfortable with the former when speaking to a broader audience–the public tends not to be specialists, and the important thing is that they get the main story, not the nitty-gritty details.

Oversimplification of your research can be frustrating, too. Scientists “can’t overstate the uncertainties on the one hand, nor neglect to mention dangerous or unpleasant possibilities on the other,” points out biologist Steve Schneider. “Our job is to provide the context,” he says, and often that can be done by having prepared, correct metaphors and examples that help illustrate a concept for the journalist and the public.

Homework

Do some research to find out who your institution’s or department’s press officer is. Consider reaching out to introduce yourself to him or her, and possibly offering to provide quotes or expertise in your research area, should they ever need it. That way, when you have an article that’s ideal for sharing with the public, you’ll already have a friendly relationship with your press officer, which can make things go much more smoothly.

It’s also a good idea to practice communicating your research to the public. Use the AGU communications worksheet to write talking points for an older study of yours, so you can get a feel for the practice.

Another great resource that’s worth reading ahead of engaging the press is Escape from the Ivory Tower by Nancy Baron.

And if you’ve got a study that will be published soon and is ideal for sharing with the public, get in touch with your press officer now to get your research out into the media ASAP!

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.