Resources

We’ve collected together resources that may be of use to academics and researchers.

Academic Tweeting guide

How can Twitter, which limits users to 140 characters per tweet, have any relevance to universities and academia, where journal articles are 3,000 to 8,000 words long, and where books contain 80,000 words? Can anything of academic value ever be said in just 140 characters?

We have put together a short guide answering these questions, showing new users how to get started on Twitter and hone their tweeting style, as well as offering advice to more experienced users on how to use Twitter for research projects, alongside blogging, and for use in teaching. See the guide here.

Academics on Twitter

Thank you to everybody who suggested their favourite academics on Twitter following the invitation on the blog - we received over 600 suggestions. In an attempt to turn the list into useful resources, we have separated the users into seven subject areas, based on their research areas. Browse the lists here.

Podcasts

These podcasts were recorded at our Investigating Academic Impact conference on 13th June 2011. Choose from ‘Academic Impact on Policy-Making’, ‘A ‘How To’ Guide to Measuring Your Own Impact’, ‘Improving Academic Communication’, and more. Browse the podcasts.

Presentation: PhDs Preparing for Impact

This presentation looks at both impacts within academia and external impacts: on government, business and civil society. It covers useful tools that can be used to give a picture of the impact of your work, how the subject discipline you work in can affect the impact you have, and how your impact footprint can be measured. The merits of academic blogging and tweeting are also covered. See the presentation on Issuu.

Maximizing the Impacts of your research: A Handbook for Social Scientists

This Handbook provides a large menu of sound and evidence-based advice and guidance on how to ensure that your work achieves its maximum visibility and influence with both academic and external audiences. We provide detailed information on what constitutes good practice in expanding the impact of social science research. We also survey a wide range of new developments, new tools and new techniques that can help make sense of a rapidly changing field. You can download the handbook for free as a PDF or read the chapters online.

Impact Conference 2011: Presentations and resources

Our one day conference in June 2011 looked at a range of issues surrounding the impact of academic work on government, business, communities and public debate. Panel discussions considered what impact is, how impacts happen and innovative ways that academics can communicate their work. The smaller sessions looked at how academic work has impact among policy-making and business communities, and how academic communication can be improved and how individual academics can easily start to asses their own impact. See all the resources here.

Essential how-to guides

We’ve put together a selection of guides for researchers and young academics – choose from writing abstracts, using Google Scholar, using citation software Publish or Perish, and more. See the guides here.