Creation of an Incentivized Course for Managing Your Online Scholarly Identity

Librarians at a large research-intensive university in southwest Virginia in the United States developed an online asynchronous course on how researchers can manage their online scholarly identity. It explains the importance of understanding and efficiently using scholarly identifiers and profile systems and also guides participants through the process of creating and maintaining scholarly profiles and identifiers, with a goal to have participants complete specific activities. To encourage completion of those activities the course was designed with specific incentives; for example, credits earned from the course can be used by faculty to complete the university’s computer-refresh program, which enables them to acquire a new computer after a four-year period. The content was developed in the institutional professional development Canvas platform and was thus available internally to faculty and graduate students. Participants can self-select which modules to complete. Additionally, participants can submit proof and receive credit for completing specific tasks like registering for ORCID, linking IDs across profile systems (e.g., Scopus, Google Scholar Profile, Elements profile, etc.), completing profile details like education, academic positions, scholarly works, and so on. This course is intended as a pilot that we expect to expand upon. The future goals of the course will be to cover two additional strategies for boosting online scholarly visibility: increasing discoverability and openness of scholarship and promoting work through social media and other online channels.