Whether you are pursuing a career in academia, government, industry, or the non-profit sector, knowing how to use digital media is increasingly important. Digital media can help you to widely disseminate and publicize your research. Additionally, creating an online professional presence is beneficial for building your professional identity, networking with others in careers that are of interest to you, and creating visibility of your work that can support you in finding jobs within and beyond the academy. Steps You Can Take Use Video, Digital Media, and Other Tools to Present Your Research To reach wider audiences, it can be useful to use digital tools to present your research and ideas in a visually compelling form. You can post videos on YouTube and publicize them through Twitter or on blogs, or apply for the UC Grad Slam competition. In this UC systemwide annual competition, graduate students compete to communicate their research in a concise, accessible, and engaging form—and to earn a share of $10,000 in prize money in the process. See “Scholarship Beyond the Word,” Educause Review (2015) Apply for an ORCID ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a registry that associates a unique numeric code with your name. It provides a way to ensure that others will properly identify you as the author of published work, even under different versions and spellings of your name. While the ORCID community includes university-affiliated researchers, it also includes institutions such as national laboratories, commercial research organizations, research funders, publishers, national science agencies, data repositories, and international professional societies. To register for an ORCID number, visit their website. Contribute to Blogs and Use Twitter Don’t wait for others to discover your research and understand its potential applications. Consider contributing to group blogs or using Twitter to share your expert opinions on current issues and start your own web presence. At the same time, remember that material published online is hard to erase—so think carefully about what and how much to share. Establish Professional Profiles on LinkedIn, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and Discipline-Specific Forums Develop a presence on these types of professional networking sites to make sure you are recognized as a subject-matter expert by potential employers, colleagues looking for participants in projects and conferences, people conducting research across disciplines, or members of the media. It is important to take an active role in developing the online presence you want others to find; see “Creating and Maintaining a Professional Presence Online,” Chronicle of Higher Education (2012), For specific information on developing and maintaining a LinkedIn profile, see the Berkeley Career Center site on “Using LinkedIn To Develop Your Career.” You may also wish to consider establishing a personal website, an arena in which your sphere of control over the content is greatest. For advice about the pros and cons of personal websites in academic life, see “Do You Need Your Own Website While on the Job Market?,” Chronicle of Higher Education (2011). For advice on how to use search engine optimization (SEO) to improve the ability of digital audiences to locate your work, see “Intentional Web Presence: 10 SEO Strategies Every Academic Needs to Know,” Educause Review (2012).
Whether you are pursuing a career in academia, government, industry, or the non-profit sector, knowing how to use digital media is increasingly important. Digital media can help you to widely disseminate and publicize your research. Additionally, creating an online professional presence is beneficial for building your professional identity, networking with others in careers that are of interest to you, and creating visibility of your work that can support you in finding jobs within and beyond the academy. Steps You Can Take Use Video, Digital Media, and Other Tools to Present Your Research To reach wider audiences, it can be useful to use digital tools to present your research and ideas in a visually compelling form. You can post videos on YouTube and publicize them through Twitter or on blogs, or apply for the UC Grad Slam competition. In this UC systemwide annual competition, graduate students compete to communicate their research in a concise, accessible, and engaging form—and to earn a share of $10,000 in prize money in the process. See “Scholarship Beyond the Word,” Educause Review (2015) Apply for an ORCID ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a registry that associates a unique numeric code with your name. It provides a way to ensure that others will properly identify you as the author of published work, even under different versions and spellings of your name. While the ORCID community includes university-affiliated researchers, it also includes institutions such as national laboratories, commercial research organizations, research funders, publishers, national science agencies, data repositories, and international professional societies. To register for an ORCID number, visit their website. Contribute to Blogs and Use Twitter Don’t wait for others to discover your research and understand its potential applications. Consider contributing to group blogs or using Twitter to share your expert opinions on current issues and start your own web presence. At the same time, remember that material published online is hard to erase—so think carefully about what and how much to share. Establish Professional Profiles on LinkedIn, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and Discipline-Specific Forums Develop a presence on these types of professional networking sites to make sure you are recognized as a subject-matter expert by potential employers, colleagues looking for participants in projects and conferences, people conducting research across disciplines, or members of the media. It is important to take an active role in developing the online presence you want others to find; see “Creating and Maintaining a Professional Presence Online,” Chronicle of Higher Education (2012), For specific information on developing and maintaining a LinkedIn profile, see the Berkeley Career Center site on “Using LinkedIn To Develop Your Career.” You may also wish to consider establishing a personal website, an arena in which your sphere of control over the content is greatest. For advice about the pros and cons of personal websites in academic life, see “Do You Need Your Own Website While on the Job Market?,” Chronicle of Higher Education (2011). For advice on how to use search engine optimization (SEO) to improve the ability of digital audiences to locate your work, see “Intentional Web Presence: 10 SEO Strategies Every Academic Needs to Know,” Educause Review (2012).