New research suggests that increasing the number of places where a scholar's work can be found and accessed increases both exposure (as counted in downloads) and citations. For example, in 2020, Osborne and Miller (cited below) reached the following conclusions:
Further, in 2023, Osborne and Miller observed the following about their libraries' Institutional Repository (IR) statistics over a five-year period:
One method of increasing the visibility of your scholarship is to create author accounts/profiles across multiple scholarship platforms. In addition to posting in the Law School's and UIC's institutional repositories, UIC Law faculty should consider creating individual accounts in the four scholarship platforms listed below. Instructions for creating individual accounts in these platforms are included under the "Scholarship Platforms" tab of this guide. Note that it is often possible to link author profiles between these platforms, thus eliminating the need to upload electronic files individually in each platform.
ORCID: An ORCID iD is a persistent digital identifier that individual authors own and control. See below for a snippet of an ORCID page.
HeinOnline Author Profile: A majority of law faculty scholarship is available in HeinOnline. Hein automatically generates an 'Author Profile' for individual authors, which the author can enhance.
Google Scholar Profile: By setting up a 'Google Scholar Profile,' authors can check who is citing their articles, graph citations over time, and compute several citation metrics.
SSRN: SSRN provides an ‘Author Home Page’ for every author with publications indexed in the SSRN eLibrary.
This is a comprehensive report compiled by members of the Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Section (ALL-SIS) of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Scholarly Communications Committee. This updated report builds upon a foundational 2016 study and survey, displaying the latest tools, resources, and services employed or offered by academic law libraries.
The reference librarians at the David C. Shapiro Law Library at Northern Illinois University (NIU) have compiled an excellent electronic research guide on "Increasing Your Scholarly Impact."
This guide was based on the content of similar guides created by Sandy De Groote at UIC's Daley Library, Jaime Valenzuela at the University of Arizona, and the legal reference librarians at Arizona State University. Parts of this guide were also adapted from descriptions of ORCID iDs (University of Arizona Libraries), Scholarship and Scholarly Impact (University of Wisconsin Law School Library), and Create a Google Scholar Profile (University of Oklahoma Libraries).