Why do you, as a researcher, need to have an online presence? Why can’t your research just speak for itself? Perhaps it can, but unless you’re the lead in a niche field, the majority of us are probably left to work in obscurity. Consider this though, what have you tried to find on the internet in relation to research? You may have read an interesting paper and you want to find out what else this researcher has worked on, maybe they’re no longer at the institution listed on the paper, perhaps you want to contact them to work on something together?

It’s logical to think that others have used the internet to try to find you!

If you would like to skip to the Building Your Online Research Profile Index please click here

For researchers in Australia, or possibly any country outside of Europe and North America, we tend to be a long way from everywhere. You may only meet international (or even national) peers face to face at a conference every few years (particularly early career researchers (ECRs)). Where someone in the UK can easily take a day drip on a fast train to travel across the country to attend a two day conference, for someone in Melbourne to attend a conference in Brisbane takes significant effort and resources, let alone a conference in Europe for example. Being online is a means of expanding your network (or bubble) without having to go anywhere.

Being online puts you in the mind of national and international researchers, or at least grants you the potential to be found more easily. This online presence also means that related works, outside of just your papers, can be more easily found and read.

Photos and faces

A relatively large number of people still don’t have their face attached to their University profile, their Google Scholar page, or their Social Media profiles. Not having a visual reference for people can be a turn off. Photos generally make you more approachable online, our brains are wired to see smiles as welcoming (at least in western culture), and a happy smiling photo says ‘Of course you can contact me!’. It makes you seem ‘real’ to someone from the outside, particularly if they themselves are not confident when it comes to contacting new people.

Having a consistent visual presence is important, if you multiple online profiles that each use a with different photos, it can be difficult (particularly if you have a common name) for people to find you across platforms. For example, if you have an official University profile, and a Twitter account, but with different photos, it may make people wonder if the Twitter profile really belongs to the person they think it does (again, particularly for people with common names).

Another benefit of having your photo attached to your profile is that when you finally do get to a conference overseas, researchers in your field who you’ve engaged with online will recognise your face and be more likely to strike up a conversation.

Important points:

When choosing a photo, here are some points to consider:

• Ideally your face should be visible!
  • If you use an avatar, it should at least represent you
• The photo should be at a good resolution and relatively recent!
• For profiles, keep the image to you only (not multiple people)
• Don’t look too serious, unless that’s appropriate for the market you’re interested in
• Have your neck/shoulders visible at the least, don’t have the whole image taken up by your face!
  • Think of the dimensions of a passport photo, you want to see some space around your head.
• Caveat: The internet can be a terrible place, and if you’re a white cis male (e.g. me) you probably have less to worry about having your face online. So I appreciate if you are uncomfortable with a face on social media, because the terribleness of the world isn’t something you want to deal with.

Next up in our Building Your Online Research Profile series is Find an Expert, a University of Melbourne specific research profile page. If you’re not from the University of Melbourne, try out the next part in the series on Google Scholar instead