How do you make your publication stand out from the crowd? Julia Lampam reflects...

Julia Lampam: make your publication stand out

'How do you make your publication stand out from the crowd? What tools can you use to publicise a journal article? What can you do to harness the immense power of social media to increase awareness of your content?

These questions and more are raised by publicists, marketers, editors and authors alike as we strive to improve the discoverability of the rich academic content we publish. And why? Because we’re all aiming to increase the discoverability and visibility of an article through a number of metrics and citations, with the impact factor being the most widely used.

It's all about discoverability and visibility on an article level
During our forthcoming course, Getting the Most from Journal Publicity, Alexa Dugan and I will share our experience of maximising the promotional and marketing resources available to extend the reach and impact of the research in your publications.

Publicity by its very nature is unpredictable. 
But by asking yourselves a pertinent set of questions and armed with a handful of tools, you can develop and instigate a proactive media campaign to draw attention to the research. By taking advantage of social media and online networks, as well as traditional PR resources, article level publicity efforts can help you reach wider audiences, increasing web traffic to the content and thereby potentially improving the number of citations.

What works, and what doesn't?
The evaluation of such initiatives plays just as an important role as planning – knowing what works and what doesn’t will enable you to focus on which articles you can target your limited means. Publicity campaigns take time and resource, with some being more effective than others. In addition, there is an on-going debate about how to measure the return on investment on such activity. You can focus on the number of citations, journal impact factors, web traffic to an article, number of downloads but you should also think of other benefits such as attracting key authors, as well as developing and strengthening the relationships between publisher and their communities.

Be part of the conversation
The most successful campaigns enable research to embed itself into extended communities of interest and become part of the conversation. I recall working on a journal article publicity campaign about research into the best way to cook your vegetables … two weeks later I read about the research in the weekly musings from my veg box provider … the campaign had gone full circle! Of course this doesn’t happen every time, but when it does; you certainly get a buzz from instigating a successful media campaign.'

Julia Lampam is responsible for Wiley's corporate communications and book fairs within Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and co-chairs the company's global social media group. Previously she managed their publicity activities, instigating proactive PR strategies for academic journals and the For Dummies and Frommer's brands; as well as launching Wiley’s online newsroom.

Julia is co-tutor on Getting the Most from Journal Publicity with Alexa Dugan. Book your place now.