Check journal aims, scope, word limits, preferred manuscript formats, etc. before you start writing.
Check your funder’s and the journal’s Open Access policies.
Ask colleagues to read through drafts to get early constructive feedback on your outputs before submission.
Plan your outputs carefully – don’t respond to flattering invitations to contribute to or edit special issues if preparing these will detract from more significant outputs.
If appropriate for your discipline, consider pre-registering your output with OSF or similar to speed up subsequent peer review.
Upload your output to a subject-specific preprint server such as arXiv, bioRxiv, PsyArXiv, EarthArXiv or SSRN.
This establishes priority of discovery and also facilitates collaboration, enables early feedback and can boost citations of the resulting publication. However, this could also impact eligibility for certain journals and reduce media interest for major outputs. Check journal and funder policies on preprints in advance.
Seek out opportunities to collaborate with authors from other countries or institutions. This can give a citation advantage (check it out in SciVal)
When venturing into a new subject area, seek out the most qualified experts to collaborate with.
Explore opportunities to collaborate across disciplines thereby tapping into multiple citation networks
Aim for short, clear titles for your works that describe the research accurately.
Avoid titles with puns, proverbs or pop culture references.
These are likely to age badly and be less meaningful to international audiences.
Question marks in article titles have been shown to reduce citation rates.
The abstract should clearly describe the purpose, methodology, results and relevance of your research.
End your abstract on a strong concluding statement.
Think what keywords/phrases your audience will search for and use these repeatedly in the title and abstract.
A graphical abstract can increase reader engagement and be used for social media channels.
Aim for short, clear titles for your works that describe the research accurately.
Self-citation is okay when appropriate and in moderation.
Self-citations can be excluded from citation indices.
Female authors don't self-cite as often as male authors.
Different output types accrue citations at different rates. Consider writing a review, systematic review, meta-analysis or perspective paper, ideally in a high impact journal.
Consider provocative debate pieces, inputs into policy, and, if appropriate for your field, multi-author surveys.
Your affiliation must always be 'University of Reading' and this should come first, before any departmental or other affiliation.
Use your University email: name@reading.ac.uk
Always use the same format for your names and initials on every output.
If your name does change for any reason, add any variants to your ORCID record.
Use your ORCID iD when you submit your manuscript, data set, peer review or grant application.
Share your supporting data and other materials, such as software and code, using an appropriate data repository. Search for a repository at re3data.org, or use the University’s Research Data Archive.
Add a data access statement to your output to make it clear where the underlying data can be found. Some funders require this information to be included.
Cite and link to the data from your publication using a DOI or other unique identifier.
Contact researchdata@reading.ac.uk for advice and assistance in archiving and sharing data.
