Writing a scientific paper takes significant time and effort, making it all the more important that your work gets seen. Not only by policymakers and the public, but crucially by other researchers: this boosts scientific progress and can also earn you credit from those who truly understand your contribution. In this blog post, you’ll learn six steps you can take to maximize the reach and citations of your publication using open science tools. Most of these steps take less time than you might expect but can significantly increase your reach.
Open Science can seem like yet another obligation driven by funder mandates or institutional policy. And it is true that sharing your work openly benefits science and society more broadly. It accelerates scientific progress and extends the reach of research beyond academic circles. But there are also good reasons to think about your own interests here. Openly shared research is more visible, more likely to be cited, and more likely to earn you credit from researchers who can truly appreciate your contribution. The good news is that this does not require a complete overhaul of how you work. Most of the steps involved take considerably less time than you might expect. In this post, we walk through six concrete steps that follow the natural timeline of a publication.
Step 1: Upload a preprint
Uploading a preprint before formal peer review ensures your work is accessible from day one, rather than after what can be a lengthy review process. For economists and business researchers, EconStor and SSRN are particularly suitable; OSF Preprints and Preprints.org are good cross-disciplinary alternatives.
Tip: Before uploading, check your target journal's preprint policy via the Open Policy Finder.
➡ Publishing Preprints and Receiving Feedback About Them
Step 2: Post your accepted manuscript openly
Once your paper is accepted, making it openly accessible is one of the most impactful steps for visibility. Many publishers permit depositing the accepted manuscript in a repository such as EconStor, MPRA, or Zenodo, often without embargo. Tools like ShareYourPaper and Free Your Science identify what is permitted for your journal and guide you through the upload.
➡ Self-Publishing in Open Access | Selecting the Most Suitable Kind of Open Access
Step 3: Publish your underlying research data
Datasets deposited in a repository receive their own DOI, making them independently findable and citable — your research gains visibility not just through the paper, but also through the data behind it. Suitable repositories include OpenICPSR, SowiDataNet|datorium, and the ZBW Journal Data Archive, as well as Zenodo, Figshare, or OSF.
Tip: Ideally, publish your data at the same time as your manuscript so the dataset can be directly linked and cited.
➡ Publishing Open Data Yourself | Selecting the Suitable Repository for Research Data | Which Data May Be Published
Step 4: Share your code
Openly sharing your code ensures you receive credit for a research output that would otherwise remain invisible, and increases the reproducibility of your work. Check first whether your target journal has its own code repository — several AEA journals do, as does the ZBW Journal Data Archive — or deposit in Zenodo, Figshare, or OSF.
Tip: Make sure your code is documented with a README file, published under an open licence, and citable via CFF Init.
➡ Publish Open Code Yourself | Selecting a Publication Location for Open Code | Making Open Code Citable
Step 5: Make your conference slides openly available
Uploading your slides to a repository makes them permanently findable and citable — and published under an open licence, they qualify as Open Educational Resources that others can freely build upon. Zenodo is the most straightforward option: uploading takes only a few minutes and results in a DOI you can share on your website or add to your ORCID profile.
Tip: A Creative Commons CC BY licence is generally recommended.
➡ Selecting a Publication Location for OERs | Publish OER Under an Appropriate Licence
Step 6: Update your ORCID profile
An ORCID iD is a unique persistent identifier that ensures all your research outputs — papers, data, code, slides — are correctly attributed to you and brought together in one place. If you do not yet have one, registering is free and takes only a few minutes at orcid.org. Once registered, add your new publication and all outputs from the previous steps to your profile.
➡ Why ORCID iDs are Important | More Visibility With ORCID iD: It's That Easy
Taken together, these steps show that Open Science is not only about ethics or policy compliance but also one of the most effective ways to increase the visibility of your research. A paper that is not shared through these channels is a bit like a great product with no marketing: it may be excellent, but it will reach a much smaller audience than it could.
Tip: Would you like to know more about any of the Open Science practices covered in this post? The Open Economics Guide knowledge base offers detailed background information and further guidance on all six steps.