The importance of having a strong web presence for ECR’s

Towards the end of 2016 the Holwell lab had a special visitor, Dr James O’Hanlon from Macquarie University, a behavioural ecologist who’s most well-known for his work on deception in the elusive orchid mantis, as well as his uncanny ability to make a study species just disappear when you go into the field with him. Magic!

Anyway, while James was here he was roped in to giving a workshop on Science Communication for the department, and Lizzy Lowe and I jumped on-board to give him a hand.

science-communication-poster_sbs-november-2016

As part of this, I did a presentation about why I think it is important, particularly for early career researchers (ECR’s), to have a strong web presence. I also gave some suggestions about ways you can build up your web presence, through a personal website as well as social media.

Personal websites 

My main suggestion was that all ECR’s should have their own personal website that is hosted away from their current institute. Many of us have university profile pages which have some contact details and maybe a list of our recent publications, but these are often difficult to update yourself and you have little control over the content that is included. Perhaps most importantly, as ECR’s we tend to change institutes in  between our degrees, postdocs and periods of unemployment, so we need a site that we can carry with us.

Luckily, it is super easy to set up your own website without any background in programming, and often for free. There are lots of platforms out there and it is worth asking around to get opinions on the best one, but options like WordPress, Weebly and Wix are all popular choices among scientists. Squarespace also has excellent options, but does charge monthly to use.I started off with a GoogleSites page, but after a while found it a bit clunky and didn’t really like the style of my page there. Most of the above platforms have a bunch of free templates that you can use to build your site from. When you sign up for an account you will be invited to browse the templates until you find one you like, and then you can customise it by adding and naming your pages, and filling in some text and photos. I found WordPress largely intuitive to follow, and when I couldn’t work it out I would google for help.

Alex Bond has some more detailed tips about deciding on a web platform, including making the decision where to host your site. I didn’t really think about this before I built my website and wish I had of done a little bit of reading first! I chose the easy option of doing it through WordPress.com which means I lack some flexibility, but on the flipside it is very easy to quickly whip up a blog post or add my latest paper.

The benefits of having your own website 

For me, the most important reason to have your own website (and to engage in a few other web platforms too) is to be easily contactable. As a postdoc I’m still  building my connections and raising my research profile, so I want people to be able to find me easily. Potential employers and collaborators may google you to get more information and you want to make it easy for them to find out all the good stuff about you. Having a website also allows you to be accessible to a wide range of other people including journalists (e.g. your local radio station might be looking for scientists to comment on issues or do interviews about general science topics), the public (outreach opportunities), and conference organisers (people looking for contributors to symposia). Another common reason I would need to visit the webpage of an ECR is to get their contact details for nominating them to review manuscripts (I always suggest at least one ECR when I submit an MS for review). If you haven’t already, try googling yourself and see what pops up on the first page!

The essential components of your website

The best part about having your own page is that you can do with it whatever you like. I love browsing through fellow scientists websites and seeing the various ways they make their personality come through onto the screen.

Regardless of the flexibility there are few things that make for a  great website:

  • Your contact details! Make these easy to find so people can get in touch with you. Include your email address and the institute you currently affiliate with.
  • An about me section that outlines your current position, research interests and projects
  • A photo of yourself. Particularly useful for figuring out who people in your departmental tearoom are, or being able to spot that person you want to meet at a conference.
  • A list of your works like journal articles, book chapters and so on. I like to include a link to the paper on the journal’s page, and even better is to provide a preprint copy that someone can click to download without going through a paywall.

That’s it, those are the essentials. If you are really new to research you could have all of that one a single page and then add more later once your career advances.

Other good stuff to include on your website

  • Links to media articles that have featured your research
  • Multimedia like videos that you’ve made about your research (like these awesome animations by Josie Galbraith), or yourself giving a lecture or public talk
  • A gallery of photos that relate to your research (or something else you are passionate about)
  • Links to other professional networks like your Google Scholar profile, Twitter etc.
  • Details about your teaching experience & philosophy
  • A list of potential projects if you are looking to recruit students
  • A blog page (see discussion here about whether you should start a blog)
  • Details about other things you do other than science – drawing? photography? book club? Eurovision?

Some tips when putting your site together

It’s a good idea to keep in mind who your audience is when you make a website, especially if you decide to include a blog. If you do decide to blog realise that you have to post pieces fairly regularly to make it worth your time and gain a following.

In general make sure your site is simple and clean, easy to navigate, and up to date. If you treat it like your online CV then you’ll make sure to always update your website when you get a new paper or your work gets covered in the media. Keep your themes and fonts the same throughout so it is nice for your reader to look at.

Once you have your site together you’ll need to make sure people actually visit it. Include links to your site on everything! Your email signature, CV, conference talks, Twitter page and your GoogleScholar profile (see below).

Other platforms to promote yourself on

As well as building your own website, you may find it useful to engage with people across a range of other platforms. Get to know the most common platforms in your field and sign up for an account. I usually try to entice people back to my webpage anyway (e.g. from LinkedIn, Twitter etc.) because I keep that most up to date.

GoogleScholar: Of all of the platforms, I think it is most important to have a GoogleScholar profile. They are really easy to set up, and are so useful as a point of reference for finding publications by a particular researcher. If you are not already familiar with GoogleScholar, it is a list of all your publications with links to the articles themselves, the number of times each work is cited, your H-index, and a list of your co-authors. The profiles aren’t without a few issues (like when they include articles from 1950 that you most definitely didn’t write given you weren’t born yet), but overall, they are pretty useful. You can also set up alerts to keep track of when your own papers are cited, or when your favourite authors publish a new paper.

Twitter: There is already loads of information online about the pros of engaging with your science community online via Twitter. One point I will mention is that Twitter is a great way of raising your profile, especially when you are actively engaging in conversations. Last year I had around 1000 hits on my website that were directed from Twitter, which means that I must have said enough weird stuff online that people were curious enough to click through to my website. Another 1000 hits were from Facebook, which is probably because I also promote my blog to my friends and family there. I find this really neat as it means that I am connecting with people about science beyond my immediate academic community.

Look for inspiration 

When I was putting together my website I looked around to see what other scientists were including on their sites. One day I would like to update my site further and add some more cool stuff, but for now I aim to keep it fairly clean and simple. Look around at your colleagues sites and see what you like and what you would rather not include. I particularly like Mike Kasumovic lab website because it is so creative and visually appealing, but I also really love the more simple approach by Megan Friesen. On both of those sites it is really obvious what their research interests are.

You can have a look at the slides from my presentation below:

 

 

 

One thought on “The importance of having a strong web presence for ECR’s

  1. Pingback: The quest to be savy in scientific outreach | David Tng

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