In addition to the suggestions made by the authors of the focal article (Lapierre et al., Reference Lapierre, Matthews, Eby, Truxillo, Johnson and Major2018), it is also important for academics to market themselves and keep their information up to date. As a practitioner, I sometimes end up working with interesting data sets worth publishing but lack the time and resources to complete the entire publication progress. There are also times when I am in need of a targeted intervention and would be willing to work with academic researchers in a mutually beneficial arrangement. As such, I need to be able to find you. This commentary expands on the focal article by providing some tips on how to be found by practitioners and increase the likelihood that a practitioner will contact you. Though networking is also of vital importance in this area, the authors of the focal article covered that well; as such, no further discussion of it will take place here.
Update Your University Biography/Website
Most likely, regardless of where I have heard of you, the first place I am going to look when trying to decide if I want to contact you is your faculty bio on your department's website. There are several reasons behind this. First, it allows me to verify that you are, in fact, a real person and have an academic appointment. It is an admittedly quick and dirty screening process simply meant to verify that some institution thinks highly enough of you to list you as affiliated with them. Second, your faculty bio is where I am likely to find your updated contact information; whether it is email, phone/fax, or mailing address, I expect to easily find this information. Third, and most importantly, your bio is where I expect to find updated information regarding you and your research interests; this information is varied and will be treated in turn.
CV
When I'm looking for a collaborator or academic for an applied project, I am most interested in what you have been working on lately. An updated curriculum vitae is the gold standard of what I want to see because it should include a list of your peer-reviewed publications, popular press articles, conference presentations, books/chapters, applied work/technical reports, etc. But when your CV is not updated, I lose out on the information I want most: What are you currently doing? I tend to be most interested in working with researchers who are actively engaged in a research area, but if I cannot find a record of what you have done in the past few years, it is unlikely I am going to initiate contact. (Implied in this, of course, is that you should link to your CV on your faculty bio.)
Research Interests
Regardless of what your publication record indicates, I would like to see some sort of short statement indicating your current research interests. Nothing long, but a few sentences discussing what you and/or your students are working on and are actively interested in pursuing. But be honest, as it is frustrating to contact a researcher who is not interested in pursuing further research into a topic area on which they have recently published. For example, I have worked on an applied research project in an area that a contact of mine had recently published an article in; in fact, that had provided the basis for much of the work I was doing. However, when I contacted my colleague to gauge interest in some follow-up work, I was met with a severe lack of interest in researching the topic further. This, of course, is perfectly acceptable, but it would have been nice to know that in advance.
Keep Social Media Updated and Active
Though my friends and family might find the header for this section ironic given my disdain for social media, it is nevertheless important to keep active and up to date on social media because it is an easy and convenient way for practitioners to initiate contact. An academic's social media presence is entirely up to personal choice. Two frequently relevant platforms are LinkedIn and ResearchGate; both offer professionally relevant information for researchers and practitioners alike and are convenient ways for practitioners to keep up to date on professional colleagues’ research interests and publications. Additionally, both of these platforms offer opportunities to discover new researchers engaging in research that may be relevant to my organization.
Publish (Where It Will Be Seen)
Up until this point, this article has been focused on how to be findable once you have been noticed. This presupposes that you have been noticed in the first place though, and easily the best way to get noticed is to publish in journals that are professionally relevant to me as a practitioner. While the academic publishing world has its own rules and rewards systems in place that I do not intend to disrupt or advocate against, I do want to echo the importance of publishing in practitioner-oriented journals as a means to be noticed by practitioners who may want to follow your research and initiate collaborations. When I read research that is immediately relevant to me, I often follow the work of the researcher so I can find additional useful research and change my organization for the better. But to follow the researcher, I have to be able to find the researcher.
You have
Access
In addition to the suggestions made by the authors of the focal article (Lapierre et al., Reference Lapierre, Matthews, Eby, Truxillo, Johnson and Major2018), it is also important for academics to market themselves and keep their information up to date. As a practitioner, I sometimes end up working with interesting data sets worth publishing but lack the time and resources to complete the entire publication progress. There are also times when I am in need of a targeted intervention and would be willing to work with academic researchers in a mutually beneficial arrangement. As such, I need to be able to find you. This commentary expands on the focal article by providing some tips on how to be found by practitioners and increase the likelihood that a practitioner will contact you. Though networking is also of vital importance in this area, the authors of the focal article covered that well; as such, no further discussion of it will take place here.
Update Your University Biography/Website
Most likely, regardless of where I have heard of you, the first place I am going to look when trying to decide if I want to contact you is your faculty bio on your department's website. There are several reasons behind this. First, it allows me to verify that you are, in fact, a real person and have an academic appointment. It is an admittedly quick and dirty screening process simply meant to verify that some institution thinks highly enough of you to list you as affiliated with them. Second, your faculty bio is where I am likely to find your updated contact information; whether it is email, phone/fax, or mailing address, I expect to easily find this information. Third, and most importantly, your bio is where I expect to find updated information regarding you and your research interests; this information is varied and will be treated in turn.
CV
When I'm looking for a collaborator or academic for an applied project, I am most interested in what you have been working on lately. An updated curriculum vitae is the gold standard of what I want to see because it should include a list of your peer-reviewed publications, popular press articles, conference presentations, books/chapters, applied work/technical reports, etc. But when your CV is not updated, I lose out on the information I want most: What are you currently doing? I tend to be most interested in working with researchers who are actively engaged in a research area, but if I cannot find a record of what you have done in the past few years, it is unlikely I am going to initiate contact. (Implied in this, of course, is that you should link to your CV on your faculty bio.)
Research Interests
Regardless of what your publication record indicates, I would like to see some sort of short statement indicating your current research interests. Nothing long, but a few sentences discussing what you and/or your students are working on and are actively interested in pursuing. But be honest, as it is frustrating to contact a researcher who is not interested in pursuing further research into a topic area on which they have recently published. For example, I have worked on an applied research project in an area that a contact of mine had recently published an article in; in fact, that had provided the basis for much of the work I was doing. However, when I contacted my colleague to gauge interest in some follow-up work, I was met with a severe lack of interest in researching the topic further. This, of course, is perfectly acceptable, but it would have been nice to know that in advance.
Keep Social Media Updated and Active
Though my friends and family might find the header for this section ironic given my disdain for social media, it is nevertheless important to keep active and up to date on social media because it is an easy and convenient way for practitioners to initiate contact. An academic's social media presence is entirely up to personal choice. Two frequently relevant platforms are LinkedIn and ResearchGate; both offer professionally relevant information for researchers and practitioners alike and are convenient ways for practitioners to keep up to date on professional colleagues’ research interests and publications. Additionally, both of these platforms offer opportunities to discover new researchers engaging in research that may be relevant to my organization.
Publish (Where It Will Be Seen)
Up until this point, this article has been focused on how to be findable once you have been noticed. This presupposes that you have been noticed in the first place though, and easily the best way to get noticed is to publish in journals that are professionally relevant to me as a practitioner. While the academic publishing world has its own rules and rewards systems in place that I do not intend to disrupt or advocate against, I do want to echo the importance of publishing in practitioner-oriented journals as a means to be noticed by practitioners who may want to follow your research and initiate collaborations. When I read research that is immediately relevant to me, I often follow the work of the researcher so I can find additional useful research and change my organization for the better. But to follow the researcher, I have to be able to find the researcher.