Tips to increase the impact of your research

We are living in an era in which science is growing super-fast. Every day, many inventions, scientific papers, books, artworks and more are published. As a graduate student or scientific researcher, we produce content published in these forms. In this blog, I want to share some of the useful tips that I have learned from my mentors and my own experience with you, which may work for you as well.

I have been doing research for almost 10 years and have collaborated with several world-leading researchers. Successful researchers do things in addition to their own research, making them more visible and positioning themselves as influencers in their field of study.

Typically, there are several steps for conducting research. They are as follows:

Each of the steps is pretty common; however, I want to give you some tips for each step that may help you to become more successful in academia.

Before writing a paper

At the very beginning, target the audience of your paper. Keeping in mind the audience of your paper gives you a coherent direction in all of the steps of writing a paper.

A good scientific paper is mostly evaluated by its content. However, there are some tips that may add more value to the article and make it more interesting for the readers.

While writing a paper

Title: A unique title helps you to have a better impression on the readers. Since there are a lot of papers in each field of study, by having a unique title, your paper will have an excellent chance of staying in the mind of readers for a while.

Abstract: This section is usually the only free accessible section of your paper. Hence, do your best to write a clear, engaging and compelling abstract.

Keywords: Try to choose more popular keywords. Readers usually search for some keywords and find papers. Therefore, it is a good idea to have some general and popular keywords, in addition to specific keywords describing the content of your article.

Introduction: In this section, try to provide a mini-survey if the page limitation allows. Some readers might not be familiar with the research topic, so giving them a mini-survey on this research topic makes your paper more engaging to them.

Body of the paper: When you explain the details of your work, tell a story in a way that readers can easily understand. Lack of narrative is a major concern in most academic papers. Consider that most of your readers are graduate students and they are new to the topic. Providing more information helps them to understand the content. Expert readers can skip those parts.

Figures: Visualization is a critical part of each paper. Providing eye-catching figures increases the attractiveness of your content and makes it more engaging.

Conclusion: In this section, in addition to the summary of your research work, if you provide more information about the future of this research, you will have a chance to keep the reader engaged about your future works.

After publishing a paper

After publishing their paper, most researchers let publishers promote their work. However, more than 43 per cent of International Scientific Indexing (ISI) publications never receive a single citation. All ISI papers are good quality and contribute to science since they pass the peer-review process. Since there are so many articles being published, around 80 per cent are invisible to readers. As a result, it is likely that a published paper can fall into this category.

With this in mind, after an article is published, authors should start promoting it. Promotion can be done using personal websites, social media, etc. Most journals' policies allow you to upload the final accepted manuscript on websites like ResearchGate, Academia, etc. You can also create educational content around your research to facilitate the learning process of your readers.

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