Research visibility is a catch-all term referring to how well known you and your research outputs are. Metrics are ways of measuring your visibility.

There are many elements that could be considered when thinking about your research visibility, some more relevant to you than others. Our guides try to focus on the key information that can help you, but please don't feel like you have to do everything all at once.

There are some core elements that all researchers should be aware of and active in managing, but the ultimate extent to what you do to maintain and improve your visibility is down to what you are looking to achieve with the time you have.

The more visible you and your research are, the more likely it is: 

• Your work will be read
• Your work will be cited
• You will be involved in research collaborations 
• You will gain credit for your work
• You will become known as an established expert in your field

You dedicate time and effort to your research; ensuring it is visible maximises that commitment.

Rather than thinking of managing your visibility as a luxury to do when there is time, it's important to factor increasing visibility into the core of your research process. Our increasing research visibility page has some quick tips for getting started.

Being able to measure your research visibility and the effectiveness of what you're doing to increase it is important to help you use your time effectively.

There are many metrics out there, with citation metrics something that are commonly used. However, it's important to remember that one metric will only show a fraction of the bigger picture. Focusing on just one or two metrics can give a distorted representation of what's happening and lead to discrimination and systemic biases against researchers. As such, we recommend that you use a variety of metrics to assess how things are going, and encourage others to do the same.

The three that our guides look at are:

• Citations - citation metrics include basic measures such as citation count, or citation per publication, as well as field weighted metrics such as Field Weighted Citation Index. Citation metrics are often used as a proxy for impact and reach, however it's important to remember that citation counts will differ depending on the source of data. For example, a citation count taken from Scopus would likely be lower than the same metric taken from Google Scholar, as Google Scholar indexes more content. This can result in inconsistent counts depending upon where you look.
• Altmetrics - a series of metrics that measure how many times your work has been used in non-academic settings, e.g. news or social media. This can be useful to see where your engagement efforts are working, perhaps without you even realising, and so where it would be efficient to allocate your time. These measures can be seen via measures such as Altmetric, and PlumX metrics.
• Overton - measures how many times your work has been used in government policy documents. This can be useful for assessing your policy impact and seeing the links between different policy documents to find potential collaborations.

There are many other ways to measure research visibility available, each ranging in utility and purpose. For example, most social media platforms can provide data on your activity. The main thing is to find the measures that work for what you're looking to achieve.

Online research profiles act as your identity online and provide ways for you to engage with others in and outside of academia.

There are many profiles to choose between, with some being specialised for researchers, and some being open to everyone. Depending on what you want to achieve, your target audience, and your field, some will work better for you than others.

Due to their effectiveness at increasing research visibility, the University requires all researchers to create ORCID and Google Scholar profiles. Additionally, we recommend choosing one or two more that you can update regularly to help boost your visibility online.

Our guides look at some common profiles researchers may find useful, provides guidance on setting up your ORCID, Google Scholar, and RIS profiles, and gives some advice on using social media as a researcher.