scholarly impact

Participate in the Tarleton Scholarly Impact Challenge and take your research to the next level! The Scholarly Impact Challenge is designed to showcase and raise your individual research profile. To step up to the challenge, complete one research impact item per day for 8 days, or eight in one day—it’s up to you.

Upon completion, you will be featured in the Center for Educational Excellence (CEE) newsletter and on the CEE website! The first 25 participants to complete all of the challenge impact items will receive a small congratulatory gift!  

Tarleton Scholarly Impact Challenge Checklist

Instructions

Instructions for Completing the Challenge

When you have completed the eight impact items below, place the results in this Google form.

  1. Professional headshot. A professional photo will help you to generate research profiles and create a positive first impression while digitally networking. Retain your headshot to use when you generate profiles on various websites (including Google Scholar and Research Gate).

    To Do: Get/select a professional headshot.
  2. Claim your ORCID Profile. ORCID protects your unique scholarly identity and helps keep your publication record up to date. Follow the instructions provided to set up your profile.

    To Do: Keep a record of your ORCID number to submit in the Impact Challenge Completion form and to use when submitting grants. 
  3. Google Scholar Profile. Google Scholar showcases your papers and citations. Follow these instructions to set up your profile.

    To Do: Create a Google Scholar profile. Provide the link to your profile in the Impact Challenge Completion form.
  4. Research Gate Profile. Similar to Google Scholar, Research Gate is a connection and communication platform for scholars. Share your research, collaborate with your peers, and get the support you need to advance your career. The more you get your name and work out there, the more citations you will get! Sign up for Research Gate. 

    To Do: Create a Research Gate profile. Provide the link to your profile in the Impact Challenge Completion form.
  5. Understand scholarly communication. Review the content about scholarly communication. 

    To Do: Read up about scholarly communications on the link above.
  6. Reference Manager: Mendeley/Endnote/Paperpile/Zotero account.

One main goal of reference managers is to classify literature references. Some researchers use different folders and a standardized naming scheme for their literature files (e.g., per author, year or main topic), which is now done by reference managers. This enables a more flexible and searchable classification, hence making the daily life of a researcher easier. 

Example: To create an account in Mendeley:

  • Log on to Mendeley.com and click the “Create account” link at the upper right. Follow the prompts to create an account.
  • Locate an article in the library databases and import your first article into Mendeley
  • Explore!

    To Do: Chose and download a reference manager. Make a note of the email address associated with your account to submit in the Impact Challenge Completion form. 
  1. Pre-prints. Posting preprints establishes intellectual precedence for your ideas, helps you accumulate citations earlier, provides early feedback from colleagues, and helps research in your field move more quickly. Check out shareyourpaper.org, which can help make your paper open access, legally. Review the content located on the pre-prints website (the homework on this page is not required). Search for a pre-print from your area of research.

    To Do: Retain the link to the pre-print that you find to submit in the Impact Challenge Completion form.
  2. PIVOT: database for searching for external funding opportunities. PIVOT is a software system that allows us to generate searches for external funding sources. To engage with PIVOT:
  • Create a PIVOT account by following the steps on this instructional YouTube video
  • Create an individual saved search by following the steps on this instructional YouTube video

    To Do: Search and find a Grant/RFA appropriate for your field of study.  Submit the link to this grant in the Impact Challenge Completion form.

BONUS! Get a student involved. Have them create Google Scholar and Research Gate profiles and a reference management account.

The Tarleton Scholarly Impact Challenge was created as a collaboration between Tarleton Libraries (Katie Pierce Farrier and Dr. Christy Tabors) and the CEE (Drs. Kim Guay, Bryn Brown, Lesley Leach and Amber Harris Bozer) in the Center for Educational Excellence. Content was derived from the “OU Impact Challenge” licensed under CC BY 4.0 International license, which derived content from “The 30-Day Impact Challenge” by Stacy Konkiel © ImpactStory and used here under a CC BY 4.0 International License.

Questions about the Impact Challenge? Contact Drs. Kim Guay ([email protected]) and Bryn Brown ([email protected]).