The document provides advice and strategies for using social media and online platforms to advance one's research career. It recommends establishing an online presence through a professional website and accounts on social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Academia.edu and ResearchGate. These platforms can help increase visibility, track metrics, enhance networking and expand one's professional network. The document also provides tips for new users, such as exploring online guides, locating relevant online conversations, and reading discussions before actively contributing.

1. The NRF and Me

2. The Dreaded Rating
Give the best account of your career that you
can –
EMPHASISING YOUR LOCAL AND
INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION
eg:
In this evaluation cycle, then, I have established both an excellent infrastructure and
solid expertise in a variety of vaccine protein expression systems as well as in crop
plant biotechnology, which has recently enabled us to source funding from the
European Union (FP6 and FP7 awards), as well as from international companies (Era
Biotech, Spain; Pannar Ltd).

3. Publications:
Put EVERYTHING in, and
EMPHASISE YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS CLEARLY AND
SUCCINCTLY:
• GRANT OWNERSHIP
• STUDENT SUPERVISION
• OWN RESEARCH
• WRITING
• SUBMISSION –
• AND PUT CITATIONS IN AND IMPACT FACTOR OF JOURNAL!

4. Conferences / Invited Talks
This where you show local / international
recognition:
Plenary lectures
Invited talks
Published abstracts
Conference talks / posters

5. Other outputs:

6. Best outputs: a chance to shine
Make sure you use the space given TO
REALLY SAY WHY THIS WAS GOOD: eg
This article established that, unlike previous investigations, it was
possible to get high-level expression of HPV-16 L1 protein via
transient expression in plants, that it assembled into VLPs, and that
it elicited neutralising antibodies in mice. It has been cited 34
times, but also formed the basis for a patent application which is
being licenced to a major international company.

7. Completed Research
SAY WHAT IT IS YOU’VE DONE:
SUCCINCTLY explain your research
EMPHASISE your contribution
HIGHLIGHT collaborations
Put in too-late-for-assessment publications

8. Self Assessment: BYOD
BE HONEST BUT NOT MODEST:
TELL people why you’re good
ESPECIALLY highlight local and/or
international impact
Summarise YOUR advancement of your field

9. Ongoing / Planned Research
• Briefly detail what it is you’re doing right now
• Go into more detail on what you concretely plan to do:
• Eg: Thus, in the next six years we will start working on producing reagent-
and diagnostically- important proteins for immediate commercialisation, as
well as continuing work on emerging and pandemic flu vaccines as emergency
response candidates. Both endeavours are contingent upon support presently
being negotiated (one from an international funder); however, if successful,
both activities are guaranteed for at least two years. Reagent production is the
subject of a pending application to the Tech & Innov Agency (TIA); success
would allow stability for 5 years.
• An exciting new project possibility is working on fish diseases, and vaccines
and reagents for prophylaxis and diagnosis and therapy of these: a pending
funding proposal for this is based on metagenomic analysis of farmed fish
stocks and their environment for potential and actual pathogens, trawling
antibody libraries for reagents, and making vaccines in plants and algae.

10. Reviewers
DON’T USE:
- Friends or colleagues
- Exclusively local people
DO USE:
- Respected international authorities
- Appropriate international peers
- Good (ie: respected) locals

11. Intermission

12. How Auto-Googling Can Help You
Or:
Citation Metrics for Self-
Advancement

13. Autogoogling: needs some setting up

14. Autogoogling 2
To start with:
• Need a Gmail address for sign-in
• Need to train GSC as to which are your papers
What you can do:
• Immediately see your Hirsch or h-index* (which is
usually significantly higher than the Scopus or ISI
measure)
• See your 5-year h-index&, which is a good measure or
your (or other person's) recent impact
*h-index is the largest number h such that h publications have at least h citations
& largest number h such that h publications have at least h new citations in the last 5 years.

15. Useful Google Scholar tricks

16. Thanks AJ Cann!

18. Harzing’s P or P
Publish or Perish is a software program that retrieves and analyzes academic
citations. It uses Google Scholar to obtain the raw citations, then analyzes these
for:
• Total number of papers
• Total number of citations
• Average number of citations per paper
• Average number of citations per author
• Average number of papers per author
• Average number of citations per year
• Hirsch's h-index and related parameters
• Egghe's g-index
• The contemporary h-index
• The age-weighted citation rate
• Two variations of individual h-indices
• An analysis of the number of authors per paper.
The results are available on-screen and can also be copied to the Windows clipboard (for
pasting into other applications) or saved
Training resources
A 15-minute audio & slide presentation on citation analysis and Publish or Perish can be
found on Slideshare.
Google Scholar / H or H might
be best for:
• Business, Administration,
Finance & Economics;
• Engineering, Computer
Science & Mathematics;
• Social Sciences, Arts &
Humanities.

19. ISI Web of Knowledge / Web of Science

22. Elsevier's Scopus

23. Getting in with Scopus
Note: VERY useful for future searches

27. Scopus corresponds
with Google Scholar
citations for papers

28. How Use of Social Media Can Help
You for Self-Advancement
in Research

29. Why would you want to use social media?
Online Visibility Helps Track and Improve Scientific
Metrics
• Evidence suggests that an active online presence
may directly impact a researcher's credentials as
measured through traditional metrics.
• One UK researcher observed that tweeting and
blogging about her own papers led to spikes in
the number of article downloads, even for older
literature.
• For articles deposited in the preprint server arXiv,
Twitter mentions were positively correlated
with rapid article downloads and citations
appearing only months after deposition

30. Why would you want to use social media?
Social Media Enhances Professional Networking
• Online discussions can lead to tangible, real-
world social interactions.
• Conversations on Twitter can serve as an
icebreaker once two people finally meet in a
conference or workshop setting.
• Tweeting from conferences can introduce other
scientists to valuable content, and consequently
provide networking opportunities for users who
actively post during meetings.

31. Advice for New Users
In academia, there is often a particular stigma
attached to online activities: actively maintaining
an online profile and participating in social media
discussions can be seen as a waste of time and a
distraction from research and teaching duties.
However, when used in a targeted and streamlined
manner, social media tools can complement and
enhance a researcher's career.
When exploring online tools for the first time, new
users can maximize their reach by considering the
following points

32. Advice for New Users - 1
Explore online guides to social media
• The Superfund program at Oregon State
University maintains an exhaustive list of
resources (blog articles, videos, how-to
guides) focused on science and social media:
http://bit.ly/WkdN0G.

33. Advice for New Users - 2
Establish a professional-looking website
• To establish an online presence, set up a personal
website that lays out specific research projects and
areas of expertise, searchable by colleagues,
journalists, and the public alike.
• Although professional websites can be established
through UCT, external hosts (eg: wordpress.com) offer
more flexibility and are easier to access and maintain –
and can be linked out to from UCT.
• A website can be supplemented with social media
accounts (e.g., Twitter and Google+ profiles), which
will also appear high in Google search results.
• Eg: Scoop.it allows you to create a magazine-like site
for daily updates

34. Advice for New Users - 3
Locate pertinent online conversations
• Find people with common interests; follow the social
media that they link to and that links to them.
• Use established social networks (e.g., a base of
Twitter or LinkedIn or ResearchGate contacts) or a
means of notification (RSS feeds etc) to get started.
• It can be beneficial to read first without contributing
(“lurking”) to learn logistics and basic etiquette of
different social media platforms.

35. Advice for New Users - 4
Establish a LinkedIn, Academia.edu and/or
ResearchGate profile: this
• Increases your global findability
• Increases your professional exposure
• Allows you to upload material for others to
read