How do you increase the visibility of relevant past work?
I have found it frustrating to find people authoring work which presents concepts that I explored and improved upon many years ago. As a government employee, quite the opposite of academia, publication was often not encouraged. I did a great deal of real problem solving, but the focus on publication is generally limited to presenting at a conference, if you are lucky, or something of the like. However, as a journal referee, and in reading the literature, I have found cases of authors submitting, and even publishing work that was in some ways 20 years behind mine. It appears that unless you regularly publish in high impact factor journals, your work may be easily glossed over.
A friend encouraged me to put my work on ResearchGate, so that, for one thing, others could more easily find it to employee it, especially at the agency from which I retired in August. But it still seems my work is not very visible here, and it seems authors are then "reinventing the wheel," and making it square.
This is something of an oversimplification of the problem, but I think is sufficient for discussion.
In my case, part of the problem appears to be that many authors are not generally privy to all of the data as are those working in the production of Official Statistics. If you are immersed in problem solving for real problems, and learn the real issues, based on a huge amount of experience, then you have a different perspective than might someone who is being rushed to publish something.
This is too simplistic, however. There are those who find themselves in various positions. Also, many people do not seem to want to learn from all sources.
But how do we make more obscurely published work more available to others, so that they are more aware of discoveries that have been made? ResearchGate and Google Scholar and the Internet in general are helpful, but what else can be done to address this problem?
Thank you.
Dear James,
To add a new idea perahps if book/paper is included as reference literature in one discipline of a university, then it goes on to have some visibility for the use of students and their disclosure to other colleagues.
And if you do this in another universities you became having more visibility. On the other hand if it appears in a medium like television or radio may be another help.
I think that usually the "quality" is seen in terms of marketing...if you have a good publicity, your book/paper will be considered good.
But your book/paper could be very good and no one knows it, because it lacks the help of people that really knows how to transform anything in a way to be considered good.
In the market there are leaders, with lot of visibility, becasuse have good mkt support behind them. But there are also niches, that are apreciated by only a small segment of people. Sometimes niche have much better quality than leaders. But in the formation of preferences, leaders are more seen, more shared, are more prefered.
Remeber James, people do not like to think. Usually we can not make more than 3 rational decisions per day, and time cost money ...also we have the risk of thinking which means that we ask others about for example, what to read.
If those knows your book/paper then you are ok, but if they do not, then always the same people will be followed.
Quality is an issue difficult to evaluate because is subjective. If we all have the same quality then only good books/papers will be read. There are lots of unfair things in this world!
Have a nice night
Helena
Hello James, the problem you raise is a real quandary. I would like to verify your observation that Journals, peer-reviewed journals, publish an alarming array of regurgitated information. That is the state of art for Science today. Essentially, many are the scientist who have been relegated to popularism and the substance of content is secondary, if not tertiary or even to a lesser degree of importance.
Recognition is a difficult thing these days, as it has always been. One reason you see papers published that repeat past achievements is that the authors of the latest work have not either spent the time to research what was done in the past or they simply do not care what was done--they simply want to publish what they have done and that's that.
As for raising the visibility of your work...you must realize that ArXiv.org and ResearchGate and others have done an invaluable service to democratize scientific information and one should be thankful and glad for it; but, as is ongoing, the fight over blessed, peer-reviewed publications versus more liberal sources will continue.
I've been in the game as well and I know for a fact most of the citations, publications and etc, are a game of scratch my back and I'll... We all know and hate it...unless we are benefiting by it; although, I personally find no honor in such practices.
There is much more I could touch upon, but I would like to close with remembering Boltzmann and his concept of ensemble statistics, where this man was ostracized for his work, because it essentially undermined the concept of determinism. Boltzmann eventually committed suicide, for many reasons, but one of them was his isolation from the scientific community, to be sure; nonetheless, he died in total obscurity and his work risked complete neglect. In time, his concepts became the cornerstone of quantum statistics and statistical mechanics in general--God bless the man.
Dear James,
To add a new idea perahps if book/paper is included as reference literature in one discipline of a university, then it goes on to have some visibility for the use of students and their disclosure to other colleagues.
And if you do this in another universities you became having more visibility. On the other hand if it appears in a medium like television or radio may be another help.
I think that usually the "quality" is seen in terms of marketing...if you have a good publicity, your book/paper will be considered good.
But your book/paper could be very good and no one knows it, because it lacks the help of people that really knows how to transform anything in a way to be considered good.
In the market there are leaders, with lot of visibility, becasuse have good mkt support behind them. But there are also niches, that are apreciated by only a small segment of people. Sometimes niche have much better quality than leaders. But in the formation of preferences, leaders are more seen, more shared, are more prefered.
Remeber James, people do not like to think. Usually we can not make more than 3 rational decisions per day, and time cost money ...also we have the risk of thinking which means that we ask others about for example, what to read.
If those knows your book/paper then you are ok, but if they do not, then always the same people will be followed.
Quality is an issue difficult to evaluate because is subjective. If we all have the same quality then only good books/papers will be read. There are lots of unfair things in this world!
Have a nice night
Helena
Helena brings up a good point, James. You might want to think about collecting all your papers or a subset and publish them as a book for consumption in a university or by someone else. Often, information can remain obscure, because many cannot understand it, for whatever reason, and it is up to you the author to make the information more approachable through coaxing the information into some accessible form.
With the younger generation being so infatuated with technology, the presentation of information is going to change--and for the worse, I might add. As you well know, they have stopped teaching script in schools and because of Twitter anf the like, everything has been distilled down to a blurb.
I have read some of your papers--you see, RG has already worked--and I do see great significance in your work. Of course, I have experience designing experiments involving animals, and it is imperative to keep the sample numbers as low as possible--a real challenge. Anyway, I tend to be anachronistic and rely heavily upon the Ancient Ones, like, Finney, Ostle and the like. I think the younger generation has already forgotten many of these men and live and work in another space all together different from what you and I knew and are now bidding farewell to.
Unfortunately, the younger generation is becoming more and more distant from real knowledge, that is to say, critical thinking; and depend entirely too much upon software to do the heavy lifting and thinking for them. I can say that I have identified in science a real drift toward fantasy and the quality of work is diminishing everyday.
For increasing the visibility of relevant past work, We may:
1. Increase citations
2. Upload researches on RG
3. Communicate with RG members
4. Communicate on other relevant social media
5. Social Science Research Network SSRN also offers a range of high-visibility, upload researches on SSRN
6. Etc. ... !
Respected Jame!
My point of view is the same as most of other respected scholars mentioned here that publish all the past materials in shape of book and do published that book online also. Your contribution is of great significance and beneficial for scientific community.
Dear James,
RG has worked because i am also one of those pearson that read your papers.
One of your issues is connected with variance/disperson....and you are right...in a very short summary with lots of imprecisions from me, i tell you that the disperson is almost always so big that makes difficult to compare information across researchers (=quality of books/papers).
It will be interesting to investigate the correct cutpoints that should be used to classify observations (=books/papers) : the ones with scores greaters than a certain cutpoint will be predicted as very good, and yours will be there.
Dear James, the problem is when people like you knows a lot of a subject , they feel unfair not to give that information to others, because it will be the correct way to the improvement of science.
And if those people are like i really think your are a very human pearson who cares about others, then this happenings will be more painfull.
Have a wonderful life
Helena
Dear James, I think that all these platforms do give some visibility to our research papers. I found that RG members even wrote short messages to thank me for papers that were helpful to them, or to their children. But Prof Zaal did advise me to put them on Academia Edu, and Google Scholar, and I did as he advised.
At times I get an email from AE:
'Top papers from your news feed from the last week
"John Robert Seeley and the Political Theology of Empire"
by Duncan Bell
This essay will be published as chapter 11 in Duncan Bell, Remaking the World: Essays on Liberalism and Empire (Princeton University Press, 2016). The book collects together a selection of my essays on the history of political thought. This chapter explores the political ideas of Seeley, the most influential late Victorian imperial thinker. It contains the following sections: (1) The Enthusiasm for Humanity; (2) On Nationalist Cosmopolitanism; (3) Expanding England: Democracy, Federalism, and the ‘World-State’ ; (4) Empire as Polychronicon: India and Ireland.'
https://www.academia.edu/about
Thank you. I had not heard of Academia Edu, and I did not really realize that one could add something to Google Scholar that they had not already automatically picked up, like the 'regular' Google.
More information shared here regarding various platforms would be further appreciated. Any 'tips' on how to best do this may be of general interest here. - Thanks!
Also, thank you, everyone, past, present, and future, for all of your contributions to this thread.
I fully agree with the previous comments. I add two ideas:
1. It may be of help to index each paper with as many topics as possible (focused on the subject and also related to it).
2. In RG and Academia Edu, the number of topic followers is provided and may guide to increase the visibility. Nevertheless, a certain degree of redundancy in indexing may help. (For example, if we see that "Quantitative Methods" has 8,535 followers and "Quantitative Research Methods" has 2,113, we may think to index our paper with both topics. The key information about the paper will appear only once in "Home" of the interested followers).
James Knaub: “… and it seems authors are then reinventing the wheel, and making it square.”, if not worst. Bad politics and financial markets did obtain also the command in the last decades over the Scientific and Academic Community and over the development and dissemination of scientific research, creating a pseudo-scientific market?
I think much journals control such visibility with an economic interest, and while, how can I hope of others what they do not do?
Dear @James, this is likely to be of interest to you and others on this thread.
"ABSTRACT. The article reports on a study of the views and
actions of nearly a hundred scholars – mostly academic researchers
from four European countries and four disciplines – in regard to
scholarly reputation in the Science 2.0 age. It specifically looks at
the role that ‘emerging’ reputational mechanisms and platforms
are playing in building, maintaining, and showcasing scholarly
reputation in the digital age. Popular examples of such platforms
are ResearchGate and Academia.edu. Data were obtained
through one-to-one interviews and focus groups, supported by desk
research. The main findings were: (a) it is early days and uptake
is light and patchy with platforms largely used for non-reputational
purposes, such as sharing documents; (b) most users were passive
and did not fully engage with the social aspects of the platforms;
(c) the reputational focus was very much on just one scholarly
activity (research), on just two outputs of that activity (publications
and conferences) and one measurement of that activity (citations),
but there are the stirrings of change; (d) young researchers are set
to profit most from the emerging platforms."
Use of social/electronic media may be found useful for promoting quality work.
Work has to be consistent and of high quality to be noticed by other researchers.
Best Regards.
The question is very relevant, sir.
And the issue behind is of serious concern. The lack of communication between those who work out there in the field and those who operate from the armchair is appalling. I have witnessed it in India, especially in Social Sciences.
I believe one solution(not 'the solution' though) is to host conferences (online or offline) where these two worlds can meet and enrich each other.
And yes, the outcome of such conferences should not be just participation certificates, rather solid suggestions and recommendations for fruitful research.
The art of a true literature review is deteriorating as some researchers conclude that if items are not electronic and on google or similar search engine that no one has ever written about it. My dissertation utilized Donabedian's Performance Theory. He was a professor at the University of Michigan and much of his work was only available on microfiche because it originated prior to 1990! That is changing with the increasing number of items that are being digitized. With that said, I would recommend that you create Digital Object Identifiers on your posted items here at ResearchGate. I would also search for online tools such as those available to post Presentation--some are called slide sharing. And, I would look at websites such as Academia.Com and LinkedIn to further give visibility to your work product, even if it is in a working paper format. For future government workers, I would advise that they make copies of their work and create PDF's that are dated. One of the problems that I have experienced is that work is not dated or properly cited. In those working papers, place a citation. Author, (year). Title of the item. Presentation or project at XYZ. I have maintained some business plans and other files like this and they have come in handy. I would also suggest that you associate keywords for searches in all of your papers so that the items can be found. That is another problem as search engines have become very sophisticated but they require keywords to locate actual items. I do all of these things in an effort to both give credit where credit is due and receive the same. I hope that these suggestions help with your dilemma. Oh, one more thing. I struggle with the concept of government employees only being able to co-author with major organizations. Recently, I wanted to work with a regulatory agency but they are notorious for only loaning out their employees on paid, sponsored research from other organizations such as professional standard organizations. So, government workers are limited in their capacity to share but that is also changing as I see an increased number of presentations posted from government agencies.
Good ideas, thanks.
Regarding the DOIs that ResearchGate lets us generate, I have not had a great deal of success with generating new DOIs for documents on my profile that did not already have one. I have generated DOIs in two such cases, but in most cases, I do not see a way to do this successfully. I wrote to ResearchGate, but as I recall, I think that they basically seemed to say it could not always be done. But I see that their software is changing, and might be worth revisiting to try again to generate DOIs on occasion. That is a nice service by ResearchGate.
@James, I see that RG allows us to generate DOIs for conference papers and datasets only. For articles, I think we cannot generate DOI s. Wouldn't it be better if we could?
Google Scholar profile - information:
I did not realize that one could set up a Google Scholar profile. I thought that Google Scholar would only display whatever they found for you, and there was nothing more involved. However I did recently see where someone, perhaps on ResearchGate, pointed to a blog at this link:
http://infospace.ischool.syr.edu/2012/09/12/google-scholar-citations-setting-up-a-profile/
It has information and a link to setup a Google Scholar profile.
I tried it, but it does not allow anyone who is retired, and no longer has an email address with an institution, to set up a profile. At least it has a number of my papers, but does not allow me to alter anything.
The US Government is not very helpful in such matters. So if you worked for that rather large institution, as I did, I doubt that you have an official email address, when fully retired, that could be used for this profile.
However, as long as you have an institutional email address, it could be worthwhile to setup a Google Scholar profile.
Google Scholar was mentioned earlier on this thread, and I thank everyone for all of their contributions.
Google Scholar is really helpful. I have also profile on Google Scholar.
James: an item that I had given up on publishing was just recently accepted. So, keep those items handy because you never know where you can find a place for them. Consequently, I would consider updating some of the items and submitting them to journals with the references to presentations (dates) intact so that you can show that this information has been out there for awhile.
Dear James, I believe that I mentioned Google scholar. Prof Z asked me to create an account a short while back. This is Einstein's account. Have a good look and a good laugh too. It's right that someone create it for A. E., it shows us that we are DWARFS.
"Albert Einstein
Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton
Physics
No verified email"
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qc6CJjYAAAAJ
Ruxandra:
Thanks for sharing the point about indexing as I have not heard it before. I can see how the redundancy in indexing would help visibility.
Best regards,
Debra
I'd just reiterate one important bit of what other colleagues have said: if possible (i.e., no copyright issues etc.) put your work online to make it more visible.
Note that it is possible to suggest to Google Scholar to index materials from your web page, see the link below:
https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/inclusion.html
Go to any research data base, such as ISI-web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar: I suggest Google Scholar, which is free. Let n_{i,j} be the number of times your paper (i) has been cited in the year of age e_{j}, (number of years elapsed from its publication year till now). I propose to classify the papers according to one of the norms: {N_pi{i}= (\sum_{j=1}^{e(i)}} [e(j)n_ {i,j}]^p)^{1/p}.
Find over 30 different ways for increasing the citations possibilities.
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2344585
Thanks Nuha Mashaan for her valuable comment.
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2344585
There a plenty of academic, social networking. You may find all of them in the part four of my research tools mind map.
https://www.mindmeister.com/39583892/research-tools-by-nader-ale-ebrahim
Scholar Google has interest in the enumeration of titles and journals, volumes, pages, year, etc. The author has this effective possibility to put his publications but has not got the contents always. Also Research Gate has got these possibilities with the contents of the articles. Other possibility is to publish in the net a complete CV, for example in your institutional personal page.
You may find "3rd SERIES OF INTRODUCTORY WORKSHOP ON: Strategies to Enhance Research Visibility, Impact & Citations" presentation file interesting. In this series I present 25 comprehensive approaches to improve research impact and visibility.
https://figshare.com/authors/Nader_Ale_Ebrahim/100797
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