Do I need my own website as a researcher?

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• Session leader: Annika Rockenberger
• Minute from: Anne Fouilloux
• Lesson Topic: Why and how writing your own website?
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Minutes of the studyGroup@UiO discussion session

When: 1st March 2019, 14:00-16:00

Why?

We discussed about the importance to be visible as a researcher and as a first exercise we searched for our full name in an anonymous browser:

• How visible are we?
• Do we easily find our professional profile? Or do we first find personal/private profile?
• Does it represent yourself?

The first hints when searching on internet should be your professional profile (nothing related to your private life!) with a clear introduction of yourself:

• Your scientific background
• Your research interests
• Your publications

Conclusion:

• Don’t let other talk about yourself!
• If your name is very common, make sure you add information that allows anyone to recognize you (picture, CV, etc.)

How?

Your personal website does not need to be fancy but it needs to be:

• easy to update: it is important to have up to date information (current affiliation, publications, etc.)
• easy to find: add keywords that illustrate your research interests
• easy to deploy and maintain: don’t overdo it! Your website can be as simple as one markdown file in a github repository.

During the studyGroup, we discussed about different solutions to implement and deploy a personal website:

• Build a website with Wordpress: the best is to first choose the free plan as it offers everything you need to start and set up your website. One inconvenient is that your website name will contain wordpress.com (such as firstname_lastname.wordpress.com).

• Build a website and host it with academia: mostly if you plan to stay in academia. One of the main goal of academia is to share publications. There were a few problems with paper ownership and academia is not as popular as before (but still a good reference).

• Build a website with github: create a new repository called username.github.io where username is your github username. This will automatically create a personal website. Then you can:

  • create a README.md file containing all the information you would like to show.
  • take a website template to create a more complete and complex website. For instance using academicpages template.

Buy your domain name

It is not expensive to buy a domain name for your website (for instance with firstname.lastname.com):

• Check domene shop