Building your online profile as a postgraduate researcher

Much of our life takes place online these days, with many of us having digital identities across various platforms. You might also already have an online academic identity – and it is important that you curate this.

Maintaining and curating your online profile can have several benefits:

• You can make sure information about you is accurate
• It makes it easier for others to find you and your work
• It is an opportunity to showcase your research to others
• You can ensure that you receive full credit for your work
• It helps to make your research open
• You can build a network with others in your field

So, what are the various platforms available to you?

Pure is the University’s research information system. As a postgraduate researcher at the University of Birmingham, you will automatically have access to Pure. Here, you can add information such as your research interests and a biography. Pure can also create a public profile on the Birmingham Research Portal for you. This will be indexed by search engines and is a way of establishing your credentials as a researcher at the University.

ORCID stands for Open Researcher and Contributor ID. It is a persistent digital identifier (PID) which uniquely identifies you. You have control over the data that goes into ORCID and this can include information about your education and publications. Your ORCID stays with you whenever you move institutions. As somebody ‘blessed’ with a common name, I really appreciate how having an ORCID helps to disambiguate yourself from others with the same name! ORCID also keeps track of name variants, e.g. if you change names during your career. It has become so widely used that many publishers and funders now require you to have an ORCID, e.g. when you submit a manuscript to a journal. Another great thing about ORCID is that it links up with other services (including Pure), which can then automatically update your ORCID record for you.

Scopus and Web of Science are large indexing databases which you may already have come across during your research. You can access them through FindIt@Bham. If you have already published, the databases may have automatically created a profile for you, which you can claim and curate. There are instructions online on how to update your Scopus author profile and your Web of Science researcher profile.

You can set up a Google Scholar profile and claim your works. We often find that Google Scholar includes more publications such as ‘grey literature’ than Scopus and Web of Science, which are more selective in their coverage.

LinkedIn is getting more popular with academics. You can use the platform to connect with other researchers and, over time, to build a reputation as a researcher in your field. One way of doing this is by posting updates about your work and adding a list of your publications. You can also use LinkedIn to explore career paths taken by others in your field – Careers Network offer support for using LinkedIn.

Now that you’ve done the hard work setting up your profiles, we recommend you check that they are still up-to-date every six months (or more frequently for LinkedIn). Let us know in the comments which online platform you have found most useful in your research journey so far.