How scientists should market themselves
In his speech at a recent conference, Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, urge scientists to better market themselves, so that the world might have a better chance to solve hard problems like energy consumption, poverty and global climate change. Many scientists don’t value the importance of marketing — this is a big mistake.
In my experience, successful research projects, especially those with the most profound influence, often require as much effort in building marketing as in conducting research. Scientists can spend years in the research labs and produce ground-breaking results. However, if they can’t make the world understand their research, they can’t really help the world to progress. This is why Page is urging scientists to budget fundings for marketing and universities to encourage an entrepreneurial research culture.
If you are a scientist, how should you market yourself?
Create a professional home page for yourself. The Web is one of the best place to market yourself. You should create a home page that describes your professional background (e.g. CV and biosketch) and your research. With this, the world can learn about who you are in few minutes.
Create a blog of your research. Blogs is an effective tool for communicating with the public and attracting people to your research. You can build your blog around one of the following themes: (1) a project-oriented blog — a blog that tells a story of your research (e.g., your research progress and findings), (2) a special-interest blog — discuss those research topics that interest you. The goal may be to educate the public, brainstorm new ideas, or report latest news and research development.
Publish your research work online. In addition to publishing your professional information online, you should also make available your publications for download. The easier for people to access your publications, the easier for them to learn about your research. When listing your papers, make sure you clearly state the reference information. It will make easy for other researchers to cite your work.
Here are some examples how scientists have marketed themselves:
- MIT CSAIL Research Abstracts — how to present your research work (problem, approach, research support, references)
- Prof. Tim Finin at UMBC — CV, biosketch, publications
- Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group Weblog
- The Entrepreneurial Mind — a special-interest blog by Prof. Jeff Cornwall
Last spring Professor Marie desJardins asked me to talk to her graduate class on Basic Research Skills. I chose to talk about why researchers should establish a presence on the web and effective ways to do it today.
I’ve agreed to give a similar talk again this spring for the course, which is being taught by Professor Krishna Sivalingam. I am interested in seeing what changes I fell have to me made as I revisit the slides. If anyone has suggestionzs — please let me know.
Comment by tim finin — February 18, 2007 @ 4:55 pm
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