Projects help to keep your peers updated about your current research. Here are a few tips to make sure they notice
1. Share as you go and have your followers come back for more
Sharing regular updates makes it easier for your peers to keep up with your work. Updates can be anything from negative results and data to what you plan on doing today. You don’t have to wait until you have polished results to share, just add what you think matters to your project, and share along the way.
Check out the graph below to see how the frequency of your updates can increase the number of people reading them.
* Projects created between 10/01/2016 and 04/25/2017. Only includes project updates and project update reads within six months after project creation.
2. Make it visual
Add media. Photos and videos are great. People want to see what’s going on in your lab. Oh and by the way, images capture your followers' attention and result and more than double the reads per project update on average.
3. Add all your research to projects
Adding relevant research to your project, including articles or unpublished work, helps other researchers understand how your project fits within the broader context of your research.
It also increases the visibility of your project and the added research items themselves. So by adding research to your project you not only boost the visibility of your project but the research items you add also get a boost.
In fact, research that's added to projects gets three times more reads on average than research that's not part of a project.
Projects are a great place to share and raise awareness for research that you haven't published elsewhere yet, including:
Leanne Williams, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, has noticed the effect of putting her research into context with the help of projects, too. She says:
"Projects allow us to rapidly share the new findings from the project, and to link them with publication outcomes. The rate of reads indicates the success of having this integrated forum for people and outcomes."
Williams is working on new biomarkers to take the guesswork out of finding the right antidepressant. You can keep up with her progress by following her project here.
4. Write a descriptive title
Even the most interesting research project can fail to gain traction with a vague title. An informative title makes it easier for your network to quickly discover and understand your research. For example this project title: “Assessment of memories and psychological disorders associated to trauma in refugees and victims of war” provides a lot more information than simply “Psychological disorder study”. The same goes for the project’s description!
Being precise and descriptive helps our algorithms pick up your project and recommend it to research on the network. A good length seems to be somewhere between 100 and 140 characters.
5. Check out other projects that grab your attention
Don't forget to check out other projects in your field and follow them for updates. Perhaps the researcher who runs the project you follow is interested in your research, and follows you or your project back.
There are many ways to find interesting projects. One is to find them by entering relevant keywords into our search. Another way to find projects is browsing our suggested projects in your home feed.
Inspired to update your project? Click here. Don't have a project yet? Create one.
