The Global Academy is working to support achievement by 2030 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (The Global Goals) by highlighting and showcasing academic work on the Goals that is making a real contribution.

To support this aim, the Global Academy website is a growing resource where academics from around the world post their researcher pages to highlight how their work is supporting achievement of specific Global Goals. From here academics, and their funders, can identify opportunities for research collaboration, or important gaps in research, as we seek to meet the UN Global Goals.

But which researcher pages are going to have the biggest impact? – how do we know when a researcher’s page is a good one? This blog is designed to help with those questions and provide some ‘top tips’ – so here we go:

Provide a good photograph

Your photo is the first thing others are going to see when they open your page. It needs to be in focus(!) and project the image you are seeking to put across in the rest of your page.

Try to answer all the questions in the researcher page builder

This might seem pretty obvious but what might just feel like an easy skip when you are answering the questions to populate your page may look like a big gap when it is formatted and shown on the published page. We have tried to make this as easy as possible for you, and not all questions will be relevant to everyone, but more definitely is more in this case.

Think about the language

The Global Academy website is a resource for academics – both to highlight their own work and to find out about the work of others associated to the achievement of the UN Global Goals. The vast majority of visitors to the site will be academics, but some will not. The website is intended as a truly global resource. With that in mind it is important when describing your research focus and projects on your page to think carefully about the language you use. Could someone not directly working within your field understand it? Could someone with something other than English as their first language understand it?

It’s all about the Goals

By including your researcher page on the Global Academy website you are showing the world that your research is contributing to the achievement of the UN Global Goals by 2030. This is why other academics are visiting the site – they may be seeking potential collaborators. It is why research funders are visiting the site – they are seeking to identify gaps in research or work worthy of enhanced support.

However, others are only going to know which Goals you are working on if you tell them by making it clear on your researcher page. We know that in many cases this may take a bit of thought and a little time and effort – particularly when you narrow your work down to specific targets (which are ‘nested’) beneath each of the Global Goals. However, the benefits in terms of how easy it is for others to ‘read’ your page will be more than worth it!

Finally – promote yourself!

The Global Academy website is an opportunity for you to showcase to your peers and research funders around the world, the value of your work on the UN Global Goals. Tell everyone about your awards and successes. Make sure people know how to get hold of you easily. Perhaps even consider uploading a short video about your work and its linkage to the achievement of the UN Global Goals by 2030.

If in doubt about anything drop us a line at The Global Academy and we will be happy to help.