Abstract:
This project aims to increase the impact of UP’s scholarly activities by exposing and promoting our
researchers’ scientific and scholarly enquiry.
Researchers are the best people to promote their own work and need to be encouraged to do so by:
Increasing UP’s Research Impact 3
i. Supporting researchers as they develop their specific research niche. In this area, UP should be
able to assist researchers to:
o Circulate their working papers and conference presentations as they develop their
research ideas. Promoting their work in this way will also help protect their intellectual
property and encourage collaborative opportunities for researchers across geographic
and disciplinary borders.
o Develop search engine optimised titles, abstracts, keywords and headings for their
manuscripts to increase traffic to their research data and findings.
o Clearly and easily associate their work with the University of Pretoria. There should be
a concerted effort to help researchers’ regularly update their ORCID profiles to reflect new
outputs.
o Publish in open access journals – we currently host some good, accredited journals on
our UPJournals platform.
o Shape and Format their research papers to maximise citations. Metrics show that papers
with comprehensive literature reviews generate more citations than papers that detail
original findings. These statistics also show that an article that cites the most prominent
texts in a particular field will, in turn, receives more citations.
