Practical steps to promoting your research paper

If possible make the paper Open Access (OA) at the publisher site – see our Article Processing Charges (APC) Fund (See the Eligibility section at the top of the application form).

Submit the OA Publisher version to Worktribe (or submit your Author Accepted Manuscript if not OA at publisher) - so the paper will go into STORRE and be eligible for the REF. Adding a paper to STORRE also adds it to other Open Access search tools.

If there are related datasets – deposit them in DataSTORRE: Stirling’s repository for data and include a link to the related paper.

Add the paper to your ORCID profile, depending on how you have set this up, this can happen automatically. See https://libguides.stir.ac.uk/c.php?g=530505&p=3628775 for how to add a paper manually.

Confirm the publication as yours on any sites you have set up a profile, e.g., GoogleScholar. See https://libguides.stir.ac.uk/c.php?g=530505&p=3628775.

If your publisher gives you a bundle of free eprints to share - see: how to make the most of your publisher's free copies.

Use the Online form to post a News item on Stirling’s own news pages on the portal.

Consider a Conversation article https://theconversation.com/uk - email communications@stir.ac.uk for further advice on how to do this.

Consider writing blog posts - see our guide for help on blogging.

Tweet as much as you can and from as many different twitter accounts as possible. Get others to tweet. See more guidance on tweeting.

When blogging and tweeting always include direct links to an Open Access paper at the publisher site (or to the paper in STORRE if not Open at the publisher site – use the persistent handle URL that appears in the STORRE record, for example: https://hdl.handle.net/1893/27796).

Add a link to your article in your email signature – that way every email you send publicises your new article.

Add the article to Kudos and include a lay person summary and context of why the paper is important – this makes the paper more discoverable via web search engines. See https://libguides.stir.ac.uk/kudos for more information on Kudos.

Some authors make a video and post on YouTube. Make sure you include links to the paper in the video’s info/comments. See here for further help.

Watch the Altmetric score, but don’t get too hung up on it – the important thing to focus on is encouraging attention around your article so that people download and read it.

As well as encouraging attention for your papers – also think about engagement and impact more broadly. See the university’s Realising research impact page. You can also borrow Prof Mark Reed’s “The research impact handbook” from the library.

Promote your research through broadcast and print media by issuing a press release. Send details of your upcoming research to communications@stir.ac.uk or find out more about the work of the Communications team here.