Research Impact

Increasing Research Visibility and Impact 

The academia is changing. Previously, researchers were to "publish or perish", but this may have been replaced by a new mantra "be visible or vanish". On this page, you can find some possible ways to enhance the research visibility of your work.

Interdisciplinarity

Composite interdisciplinarity

Research findings on interdisciplinarity’s citation impact are often inconsistent. 

In short term, across all disciplines, no clear correlation between interdisciplinarity and citation rates is found (Larivière & Gingras, 2010). In non-citation-intensive disciplines, more interdisciplinarity correlates with higher citation rates. In citation-intensive disciplines, citations decrease as interdisciplinarity increases.

However, high interdisciplinary research shows substantial delayed citation accumulation patterns (Zhang et al., 2024). Interdisciplinary articles generally receive significantly more citations in long term than their mono-disciplinary counterparts (Leahey et al., 2017; Xu et al., 2025).  

Variety, balance and disparity

There is a complex interplay between the three dimensions of interdisciplinarity (i.e., variety, balance and disparity) and citation impact.

Variety (the number of categories cited) has a strong positive effect on the citation impact, but this effect can be outweighed by the effects of too high disparity (too high cognitive distance between the categories) or too high balance (too even a distribution across categories) (Yegros-Yegros et al., 2015). Specifically, highly disciplinary and highly interdisciplinary articles have a low scientific impact. Successful research tends to come from drawing on relatively proximal (closely related) fields. Distal interdisciplinarity (mixing very disparate fields) is riskier and more likely to fail.

However, in long term (over 13 years), citations (1) rise at an accelerating rate with variety, (2) decline as balance increases, and (3) rise but with diminishing returns as disparity grows (Cai et al., 2023). Although variety and disparity boost long-term citations, they negatively affect short-term (3-year) citations due to delayed recognition.

Reference

• Cai, X., Lyu, X., & Zhou, P. (2023). The relationship between interdisciplinarity and citation impact—a novel perspective on citation accumulation. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10(1), 945. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02475-3 
• Larivière, V., & Gingras, Y. (2010). On the relationship between interdisciplinarity and scientific impact. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(1), 126–131. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21226
• Leahey, E., Beckman, C. M., & Stanko, T. L. (2017). Prominent but Less Productive: The Impact of Interdisciplinarity on Scientists’ Research. Administrative Science Quarterly, 62(1), 105–139. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839216665364
• Xu, J., Zheng, Z., Min, C., Huang, W.-b., & Bu, Y. (2025). Knowledge integration and diffusion structures of interdisciplinary research: A large-scale analysis based on propensity score matching. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 76(9), 1210–1226. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.25014
• Yegros-Yegros, A., Rafols, I., & D’Este, P. (2015). Does Interdisciplinary Research Lead to Higher Citation Impact? The Different Effect of Proximal and Distal Interdisciplinarity. PLoS ONE, 10(8), e0135095. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135095
• Zhang, Y., Wang, Y., Du, H., & Havlin, S. (2024). Delayed citation impact of interdisciplinary research. Journal of Informetrics, 18(1), 101468. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2023.101468 

Hot topics

Publications in fast-growing topics have a citation advantage over those in slow-growing or declining topics (Sjögårde & Didegah, 2022).

For more details, check the Identify Emerging Topics LibGuide.

Reference

• Sjögårde, P., & Didegah, F. (2022). The association between topic growth and citation impact of research publications. Scientometrics, 127(4), 1903–1921. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04293-x 

   

Collaboration

Collaboration has a positive impact on citation counts (Polyakov et al., 2017). Papers written with collaboration (any form, including inter-institutional, national, international collaborations) receive significantly more citations compared to single-authored papers. 

International collaboration

In terms of form, articles co-authored by researchers from multiple countries are cited more often than articles co-authored by researchers from single country (Polyakov et al., 2017).

Number of countries

Size also matters. The higher the number of addresses and countries appearing with a paper, the larger the impact (Larivière et al., 2015).

Team size

Larger author teams are associated with greater citation rates; However, for large teams with more than 20 authors, increase in team size may have diminishing returns on per capita citation rates (Hsiehchen et al., 2015).

Team structures

Team structures (including team power level and team power hierarchy) are more predictive of citation impact than composition (including team size, male/female dominance, academia/industry collaboration, unique race number, and unique country number). Factors like high team power level, flat team power structure, diverse race background, large team, collaboration with industry, and male-dominated teams tend to yield higher citations (Xu et al., 2023).

To highlight, flat team structure is associated with higher team impact, which is quantified by citations of a paper, across different fields (Xu et al., 2022). Potential reasons include scientific activities are knowledge-intensive and benefit from a flat structure to foster innovation. Team members of similar career stages tend to have similar mindsets and share responsibilities, reducing communication barriers.

While teamwork generally yields higher citation impact than solo work, this advantage diminishes as the gap between teammates’ citation indices increases (Ahmadpoor & Jones, 2019). Usually, teams still outperform individuals unless the citation-gap is large. Collaborators with different citation indices can still achieve higher impact together than alone.

Reference

• Ahmadpoor, M., & Jones, B. F. (2019). Decoding team and individual impact in science and invention. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(28), 13885–13890. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1812341116 
• Hsiehchen, D., Espinoza, M., & Hsieh, A. (2015). Multinational teams and diseconomies of scale in collaborative research. Science Advances, 1(8), e1500211. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1500211 
• Larivière, V., Gingras, Y., Sugimoto, C. R., & Tsou, A. (2015). Team size matters: Collaboration and scientific impact since 1900. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(7), 1323-1332. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23266 
• Polyakov, M., Polyakov, S., & Iftekhar, M. S. (2017). Does academic collaboration equally benefit impact of research across topics? The case of agricultural, resource, environmental and ecological economics. Scientometrics, 113(3), 1385-1405. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2523-7 
• Xu, H., Bu, Y., Liu, M., Zhang, C., Sun, M., Zhang, Y., Meyer, E., Salas, E., & Ding, Y. (2022). Team power dynamics and team impact: New perspectives on scientific collaboration using career age as a proxy for team power. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 73(10), 1489–1505. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24653
• Xu, H., Saar-Tsechansky, M., Song, M., & Ding, Y. (2023). Using Explainable AI to Understand Team Formation and Team Impact. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 60(1), 469–478. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.804

Journal Impact Factor

A journal's impact factor is based on the citations rate of the individual papers in the previous two years. The relationship between a journal's impact factor and its citation impact is a nuanced topic that merits thorough examination.

Studies find that the correlation between the number of citations received normalized to the field and journal impact is weak to moderate overall (Abramo et al., 2023; Silva et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2017).

However, publishing in journals with high journal impact factors does not guarantee high citations received. The number of publications with little or no citation, even though hosted by journals in the top 10% for impact factor, is ten times that of publications that rank top-10% for citedness, but are hosted in journals with impact factor in the bottom 10% (Abramo et al., 2023).

The Matthew Effect

The Matthew Effect associated with "prestigious" journals adds extra value beyond the paper's intrinsic quality. By publishing identical duplicate papers published in different journals with different impact factors, a study discovers duplicate papers published in high-impact journals obtain twice as many citations as their identical counterparts published in journals with lower impact factors, showing that the journal has a strong influence on papers citation rates (Larivière & Gingras, 2010).

Furthermore, there is a significant citedness gap between highly cited and lowly cited authors, even in journals with very high impact factors. This may be caused by the phenomena of “scientist stratification”, i.e., a manifestation of the Matthew effect (Abramo et al., 2023).

Reference

• Abramo, G., D’Angelo, C. A., & Di Costa, F. (2023). Correlating article citedness and journal impact: an empirical investigation by field on a large-scale dataset. Scientometrics, 128(3), 1877-1894. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04622-0 
• Larivière, V., & Gingras, Y. (2010). The impact factor's Matthew Effect: A natural experiment in bibliometrics. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(2), 424-427. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21232 
• Silva, D. d. O., Taborda, B., Pazzinatto, M. F., Ardern, C. L., & Barton, C. J. (2021). The Altmetric Score Has a Stronger Relationship With Article Citations Than Journal Impact Factor and Open Access Status: A Cross-sectional Analysis of 4022 Sport Sciences Articles. Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy, 51(11), 536-541. https://doi.org/10.2519/jospt.2021.10598 
• Zhang, L., Rousseau, R., & Sivertsen, G. (2017). Science deserves to be judged by its contents, not by its wrapping: Revisiting Seglen's work on journal impact and research evaluation. PLoS ONE, 12(3), e0174205. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174205 

Open Access

Open Access Publishing

By publishing Open Access (OA), you make your publications freely available to anyone to read and re-use. This can bring benefits such as increasing the exposure of your work.

Some studies found that an open access citation advantage (OACA), increased citation of articles made available open access, exists (Langham-Putrow et al., 2021). Open Access (OA) is linked to increased citation diversity, meaning that openly accessible outputs tend to be cited by a more diverse range of sources compared to closed outputs (Huang et al., 2024). 

For more details, check the Open Access LibGuide.

Preprint

You may consider depositing your paper on preprint servers to increase the visibility of your work, which may bring benefits such as enhanced speed and citations. There are a number of preprint servers for publishing preprints across different disciplines.

For more details, check the Preprint LibGuide.

Reference

• Huang, C.-K., Neylon, C., Montgomery, L., Hosking, R., Diprose, J. P., Handcock, R. N., & Wilson, K. (2024). Open access research outputs receive more diverse citations. Scientometrics, 129(2), 825–845. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04894-0 
• Langham-Putrow, A., Bakker, C., & Riegelman, A. (2021). Is the open access citation advantage real? A systematic review of the citation of open access and subscription-based articles. PLoS ONE, 16(6), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253129 

Research Data Sharing

Research found that sharing research data is positively associated with increased citations (Colavizza et al., 2020; Piwowar et al., 2007).

The Libraries provides an institutional data repository, HKU DataHub, for researchers and research postgraduate students to publish research data. HKU DataHub is a cloud platform open to global where people can share, store, cite, and discover a wide range of research materials. Materials uploaded to DataHub will be indexed in Google Scholar and Google Dataset Search, which would also help to increase the discoverability of your data.

For more details, check the Research Data Management LibGuide.

Reference

• Colavizza, G., Hrynaszkiewicz, I., Staden, I., Whitaker, K., & McGillivray, B. (2020). The citation advantage of linking publications to research data. PLoS ONE, 15(4), e0230416. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230416
• Piwowar, H. A., Day, R. S., & Fridsma, D. B. (2007). Sharing Detailed Research Data Is Associated with Increased Citation Rate. PLoS ONE, 2(3), e308. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000308

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a strategy to improve the discoverability and search rankings of your paper in different search engines such as Google, google scholar, PubMed, and IEEE Xplore, etc. If you want to boost your readership to a wider public, you may try to optimize the search results for your work. 

Search engines return search results by analyzing the keywords, metadata, and other contents in your research paper with their sets of algorithms.

1. Title

• Keep the title succinct.
• Include the most relevant keywords or phrases in the main title rather than the subtitle.
• Place the most important terms at the beginning of the title.
• Avoid special characters.
• Avoid abbreviations unless they are well-known.
• Do not overstate your results.

2. Keywords

• Use a thesaurus to help you find adequate keywords, e.g., discipline-specific thesauri (Medical Subject Headings, MeSH and Embase Subject Headings, Emtree) and Google’s keyword tools (Google Trends, https://trends.google.com/trends/).
• Alternate broader or narrower terms. If a narrower term is used in the title, use the broader term as a keyword.
• Provide additional information that is not obvious from the title.
• Use specific, meaningful and unmistakable terms.
• Use the singular form.
• Use three to seven keywords per article.

3. Abstract

• Include the most important terms referenced in the article at the beginning of an abstract.
• Write in an informative manner - include the study design, the results, and the relevant terms.
• Write in a clear, precise, and succinct manner
• Avoid abbreviations unless they are well-known.
• Use synonyms to increase the probability of being found via different search terms.
• Repeat keywords.

Reference

Schilhan, L., Kaier, C., & Lackner, K. (2021). Increasing visibility and discoverability of scholarly publications with academic search engine optimization. Insights the UKSG journal (34), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.534

Video abstracts

A video abstract is a short video that highlights the main points of a research article (Nachman et al., 2024). It helps convey essential messages, attract public attention, and may lead to greater academic recognition.

The presence of a video abstract has a significant positive impact on the citation count of an article (Bonnevie et al., 2023; Zong et al., 2019). 

In terms of broader impact, video abstracts are also associated with a significant increase in the number of views of the research (Bonnevie et al., 2023; Erskine & Hendricks, 2024). Especially, animated video abstracts received significantly more Altmetric Attention Score, impressions, media views and media engagements.

A strong video abstract (Nachman et al., 2024): 

• Uses plain language, so the broad public audience can easily understand, 
• Uses clear, concise visuals or infographics,
• Has a brief duration (less than 10 minutes) to maintain the viewer’s attention,
• Follows accessibility guidelines to include diverse individuals, e.g., including captions or subtitles and a transcript,
• Is a co-creation with community partners, who are often involved in research as participants, funders, or evaluators. 

Reference

• Bonnevie, T., Repel, A., Gravier, F.-E., Ladner, J., Sibert, L., Muir, J.-F., Cuvelier, A., & Fischer, M.-O. (2023). Video abstracts are associated with an increase in research reports citations, views and social attention: a cross-sectional study. Scientometrics, 128(5), 3001-3015. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04675-9
• Erskine, N., & Hendricks, S. (2024). What is the effect of posting video abstracts on journal article impact? Journal of Visual Communication in Medicine, 47(2), 47-55. https://doi.org/10.1080/17453054.2024.2423087
• Nachman, S., Ortiz-Prado, E., & Tucker, J. (2024). Video Abstracts in Research. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 26, Article e64221. https://doi.org/10.2196/64221
• Zong, Q., Xie, Y., Tuo, R., Huang, J., & Yang, Y. (2019). The impact of video abstract on citation counts: evidence from a retrospective cohort study of New Journal of Physics. Scientometrics, 119(3), 1715-1727. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03108-w

Social Media

An increase in the use of social media for academic purposes, such as networking and collaboration or dissemination and sharing of information to much wider audiences, has been observed (Argüello-Gutiérrez & Moreno-López, 2024).

Research found that Twitter (now renamed to X) promotion of articles was associated with a higher rate of citations (Chan et al., 2023; Ladeiras-Lopes et al., 2022).

News mentions are positively related to citation counts and negatively related to the likelihood of zero citations (Dorta-González & Gómez-Déniz, 2025). 

Mentions on blogs, likewise, have a positive effect on citation counts (Dorta-González & Gómez-Déniz, 2025).

Engage and communicate

An online presence can be a personal calling card to highlight your experience and expertise, and brings about good chance to engage with your community and spark new ideas and collaborations. When you try doing this, avoid explicit self-promotion—allow your personal profile naturally develop based on your ability to be an effective and impactful communicator (Ross-Hellauer et al., 2020).

Instead of disseminating research in a unidirectional way, you can invite and engage others to foster participation and collaboration with research audiences.

You may consider disseminating research findings through visual elements (art or multimedia interpretations) to help your audience understand and interpret your research. Some examples include graphical abstract, infographic, science comics and video abstract.

Below are some examples of popular social media platforms.

Reference

• Argüello-Gutiérrez, C., & Moreno-López, R. (2024). Attitudes and practices of educational researchers towards the use of social media to disseminate science. Journal of Information Science, 01655515241245958. https://doi.org/10.1177/01655515241245958 

• Chan, H. F., Önder, A. S., Schweitzer, S., & Torgler, B. (2023). Twitter and citations. Economics Letters, 231, 111270. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111270 

• Dorta-González, P., & Gómez-Déniz, E. (2025). A Two-Stage Model for Factors Influencing Citation Counts. Publications, 13(2). 

• Ladeiras-Lopes, R., Vidal-Perez, R., Santos-Ferreira, D., Alexander, M., Baciu, L., Clarke, S., Crea, F., & Lüscher, T. F. (2022). Twitter promotion is associated with higher citation rates of cardiovascular articles: the ESC Journals Randomized Study. European Heart Journal, 43(19), 1794–1798. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehac150 

• Ross-Hellauer, T., Tennant, J. P., Banelytė, V., Gorogh, E., Luzi, D., Kraker, P., Pisacane, L., Ruggieri, R., Sifacaki, E., & Vignoli, M. (2020). Ten simple rules for innovative dissemination of research. PLOS Computational Biology, 16(4), e1007704. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007704 

   

Author Profiles

Using researcher identifiers when disseminating outputs will ensure that outputs will be unambiguously linked back to the individual researcher. For example, ORCiD provides a 16-digit digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher in the world. This helps avoid confusion (e.g., caused by similar names or name variants) and help you ensure you get credit for your work.

Common author profiles include Scopus Author ID, ResearcherID (Web of Science), Google Scholar Profile, and ORCiD (Open Researcher and Contributor ID).

For more details, check the Author Profile LibGuide.

The HKU Scholars Hub aims to enhance the visibility of HKU authors and research. Eligiable HKU researcher will have a ResearcherPage, which is a unique author profile available at the institutional respository.

Reference

Ross-Hellauer, T., Tennant, J. P., Banelytė, V., Gorogh, E., Luzi, D., Kraker, P., Pisacane, L., Ruggieri, R., Sifacaki, E., & Vignoli, M. (2020). Ten simple rules for innovative dissemination of research. PLOS Computational Biology, 16(4), e1007704. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007704