A nation’s integral growth on all fronts depends on the country’s research and innovation endeavors. The R&D reflects the nation’s economic growth, technological advancement, and readiness for global competitiveness. Medical enhancement improves human well-being, and research development helps create a sustainable environment. The research findings influence the country’s policy-making. India has various funding agencies, SERB (Science and Engineering Research Board), DST (Department of Science and Technology), DBT etc. to support research. Along with these India also has alliances with international funders like Wellcome Trust called “India Alliance” which aims to strengthen the research management system across the country.

Research is pivotal in fostering innovation and academic excellence in any institution. Which in turn serves as a driving force for nation-building. Hence, the goal of a researcher or academician is not only to get involved in research through publications and projects, but also to make them reach community and beneficiaries worldwide. The traditional metric to measure research impact is through citations. Beyond traditional metrics, various indicators have been proposed to extend the research visibility, such as Altmetrics, Open access, archiving, and collaborative projects. Altmetrics is an alternative metric that refers to the accumulated online footprint of any research work. Scientists showcase their research work on various social media platforms like X, FB, LinkedIn, ResearchGate, Mendeley etc. to reach both academic and non-academic communities. The research community and the public become aware of technological advancement through information propagation. The usage in terms of likes, views, downloads etc is counted and presented under the umbrella term of altmetrics. These metrics correlate and further propagate higher citations. The research visibility aids in achieving worldwide recognition and citations in the long term. Therefore, research visibility must be increased to ensure the sustainable development of the country.

In this era of social networking, this is not a one-time task, but one must keep updating the profile across platforms. Authors’ reputations and credibility matter in academia; thus accurate profiling helps authors to achieve the same. To maintain this, the first step is to consistently use names found to be distorted across the globe. Authors tend to use different forms of names and affiliations that must be maintained synchronously across papers, social profiles i.e. GoogleScholar, ResearchGate, LinkedIn. There are various unique identifiers for authors, irrespective of their name and affiliation variations, such as, ORCID, ResearcherID, and ScopusID. The usage of these scholarly identifiers ensures that all publications are mapped to the respective author.

Publication venue plays a significant role in maintaining reputation. The indexed venues in reputable databases, e.g., Scopus, and Web of Science have credibility and acceptability worldwide. However, in today’s digital era, sharing work over social media platforms like X, FB, and LinkedIn is a common and essential trend. Academic social networks like ResearchGate and Academia.edu are also there to share the published and are used as a repository for unpublished works. Due to the lengthy publishing process, pre-prints are now an integral part of the academic community and are also recorded in databases like the Web of Science.

Overall, a country’s global acceptance and competence depends on its R&D. In the era of e-networks, preserving, sharing and maintaining the findings in proper channels is having its challenges. To preserve and rectify the issues, keeping profiles synchronous across social networks, repositories, and scholar networks can bring academic prosperity to both the individual and institutional aspects of development. Ultimately, this can fuel the pursuit of India’s journey of becoming a world leader.

– Dr Mousumi Karmakar
– Dr Sumit Kumar Banshal
Alliance School of Advance Computing