You work for years spending money, presenting your findings at conferences, facing the daily challenges of doing a scientific research and finally you get your paper published!
Now what? You think it’s done? NOPE!
Unless your goal was a boring extra line in your curriculum, your mission is not over! What’s the use of a published paper if nobody reads it? If nobody cites it?
Did you know that 50% of all published papers are never read for more than authors, referees and journal editors? Even worse, 90% of them are never cited! Not even once!
If you want to be cited, you need to be seen.
Whoever publishes in a renowned journal as Nature or Science usually gets a lot of visilibity. But what about us? How mere mortals can get visibility?
Just follow these four steps:
Get a sexy title
Believe me, science is all about attraction. There are too many papers available and your reader has limited time to find relevant information. Make your reader interested at first glance and you’re half way there.
Choose your keywords wisely
Keywords are how other people will find your paper. Don’t waste your keywords in words that don’t represent the essence of your research.
Work hard in your abstract
Time is precious and no one will read a whole research in order to find if it will be useful. If you manage to make your reader interested in the title or the keywords, amazing! Now you have the abstract to sell your research using a bit more information. Write the abstract in a way to present the relevant information in your paper and win the reader over.
An image is worth a thousand words
If you couldn’t manage the other three steps, don’t worry. Focus on having an awesome graphical abstract telling the story of your paper or showing an important part of your findings.
The super cool data you have will be lost between paragraphs, so use infographics to catch the readers’ eye and present what is awesome about your work!
Now you know what to do, LET’S DO IT!
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