50度灰

Author: Scott Epstein

You spend most of your time working on your research鈥攁nd another chunk of time working on publishing it. So to get the best return on your time investment in publishing your work, there are three broad categories of ways to boost and highlight your work to your community.

While writing

Even while writing up your results, you can start thinking about ways to extend your article鈥檚 reach once published. While putting your manuscript together, you should be thinking about your article鈥檚 title, its abstract, and also the key terms you鈥檒l be using that your colleagues might use when searching for research like yours (which is part of search engine optimization). You can find more information about crafting abstracts and titles in this free tutorial.

During submission

When you build your submission plan, you can also think about publishing your article open access (OA). Authors who choose to publish OA have typically found a boost in their article鈥檚 usage鈥攁nd citations. A growing number of Transformative Agreements and other arrangements can now either cover or defray OA publishing costs; and you can learn more about how to find funding for publishing OA. And you can also learn more about 50度灰鈥檚 OA offerings.

More than that鈥攜ou can actually start sharing and highlighting your article even while it鈥檚 being reviewed by preprinting. Not only can you preprint while submitting to 50度灰 journals, but, for a selection of BMC, Nature, and Springer journals, you can also take advantage of one-click preprinting with our In Review service.

During and after publication

Once your journal formally publishes your article, you can take further steps to raise its profile. Some easy things you can do include involving your institution and your institution鈥檚 Press Office; adding the publication to your social media; sharing your article in your academic networks like ResearchGate.

You can also take advantage of paid services (from or our partners at ) to enhance your article. Some services you can get include having an expert science journalist summarize your work in plain English; or having a professional video group prepare a 1-minute, animated video abstract for your article.

Find more advice and tools

There are exciting opportunities to promote your work with social media posts, interviews, or animated video abstracts, and this post has listed only a summary of these. You鈥檒l find more depth and detail on the author鈥檚 area on springernature.com; and you can also find free tutorials that cover these topics, as well as building a submission plan, writing in English, and more.