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Build your profile
Building your profile has significant benefits for you and your career
Building your profile involves sharing your research by explaining the work that you do and why it is important. This will help you to reach different audiences.
Key takeaways
- Networking at conferences or events is an important way to help raise your profile.
- Service opportunities with professional bodies can build your profile and your knowledge of the broader research environment.
- Engaging with the public through talks, media, or events can refine your communication skills and will look great on your CV.
- An updated University of Sydney Academic Profile Online (APO) ensures people viewing your profile have an accurate view of you and your current research.
- However you engage with industry and the community in building your profile, represent the University responsibly.
Read time: 5 min
Why build your profile?
It's worth investing time in building your research profile for a number of reasons:
- it helps boost your reputation as an expert and a leader in your field – grant assessors will often look for evidence of a national and international profile when assessing track records
- your increased visibility can lead to an uptake of your work, both in terms of citations and more general discussion of your research
- it creates a 'positive feedback loop' where your increased visibility leads to more speaking invitations (academic and public) and funding success, which further bolsters your track record and increases your competitiveness for future impact
- it can lead to collaborations with other researchers, universities, organisations, and in other areas.
Be clear about the audience, or audiences that you want to become known to and influence. How you present yourself and your research to academic colleagues at a conference is very different to how you present to a journalist working for a mainstream newspaper, or how you post on your own social media. Communicating with different audiences requires different skills.
Engage with colleagues in research and conference settings
While publishing strategically will of course assist in raising your profile, networking at conferences and workshops and reaching out to colleagues to collaborate on research projects will also help. Networking at conferences, and social media can play a critical role.
You might also like to join the Sydney Early-Mid Career Academic Network (SEMCAN) which provides opportunities for training and networking for academics across the University of Sydney who consider themselves to be at early- or mid-career stages (typically less than 15 years post-PhD award).
Engage with professional bodies, government and non-government agencies
If you are an early-career researcher, sit on committees, boards and advisory councils, and take advantage of committee positions specifically available for ECRs.
Work strategically to increase your level of engagement as your career progresses; start as a committee or board member at the institutional or local level, then progress to chairperson, and make your way to the national or international level.
This gives you good experience and helps build your profile. Governance bodies, such as University-wide committees, can also give you local exposure and help you get a better sense of how things work on a scale broader than your faculty or department.
Sit in on grant application review panels. This gives you the chance to learn more about how funding applications are reviewed and how money is allocated. Some funders offer these opportunities specifically for ECRs. Look into becoming an ARC assessor or NHMRC peer reviewer.
Engage with the local community
There are many opportunities to speak in public forums. From community or advocacy groups through to major University events such as Sydney Ideas or Raising the Bar, or external events such as Pint of Science evenings, pursue opportunities to speak to different audiences. As well as gaining further experience in public speaking, you will have an opportunity to tap into the community’s questions and interests that can then be used when writing grant applications or undertaking advocacy with local authorities.
It is a great idea to list your community engagement and local advocacy in grant applications and your CV.
Use social media
Social media is an excellent networking tool to reach fellow researchers, journalists and the community. You can build your profile within and outside the research community using social media. X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn have become productive platforms for researchers to engage with international colleagues, particularly during conferences, as well as key community and advocacy groups, and they have also become a primary resource for journalists looking to engage with scientists. If your research is visual, then Instagram can be an excellent platform to engage with audiences.
Studies have shown that scientists with active social media accounts who post about their new publications can boost metrics for published work. Social media can also be a useful resource to identify funding, award and mentoring opportunities.
If you are a current staff member, the University of Sydney’s marketing and communications team have resources to help you use social media to build your profile, such as a social media guide (UniKey required) and social media training sessions.
Engage with mainstream media
Take the time to explore opportunities for media coverage of your research, institution or a specific publication. Effective engagement with media will not only boost your public profile, but it will improve your communication skills – particularly your ability to clearly and succinctly convey the essence or key ideas of your research. Also, given the growing emphasis on research translation and impact, a strong track record of media engagement can be an asset for grant or employment applications.
The University has media, marketing and communications specialists you can work with; as do many journals, societies and associations. There are many different media outlets, so be aware of competing interests, for example, a journalist who wants an ‘exclusive’. Similarly, if you’re employed at the University of Sydney but your research project is funded by another organisation, that organisation may have priority when it comes to media coverage of your project. If you’re in any doubt at all, talk to one of the University’s media advisers.
Engage with other publications
Look beyond scholarly journals for opportunities to publish. Blogging, writing for mainstream media (e.g. opinion pieces) or contributing to websites such as The Conversation will provide further avenues to increase your profile among researchers, media and the community. These ‘open access’ articles can often raise opportunities for additional media or community engagement. Again, developing the ability to explain your research and its benefits to the broader community in easy-to-understand language is a valuable skill to learn, and it can assist in translating your research into policy and practice outcomes.
Update your Academic Profile Online
Every University of Sydney academic staff member has an academic profile online (or APO). Make sure that your APO is accurate and up to date, so that you make the most of this webpage - this is often the first result when a journalist, a grant assessor or a potential collaborator Googles you.. Get advice and tips for updating your APO (UniKey required).
Represent the University responsibly
Wherever and however you use or engage with media – mainstream or social – you are part of the public face of the University. There is considerable responsibility attached to this, with the potential for legal as well as reputational repercussions should things go awry. Read our public comment policy (pdf, 1.8MB) and charter of freedom of speech and academic freedom (pdf, 204KB).