Your work doesn’t speak for itself — you have to speak for it. Here’s how to build an online presence that opens doors.
Let me tell you something that took me years to understand: having good publications is necessary but not sufficient.
Early in my PhD at IIT Kharagpur, I published a paper at WebSci 2019 in Boston. I was proud of it. But nobody outside my immediate circle knew about it. No one reached out to collaborate. No one invited me to give a talk.
Then I started building an online presence — a personal website, a Google Scholar profile, this blog (Datanalytics101), and a modest but consistent social media presence. The difference was dramatic. My work started reaching the people who needed to see it. Interested readers reached out to me with their questions. I tried to respond as much as possible if they had very specific questions that I can help with.
As a postdoc at Stanford Medicine, I now see this from the other side. When I’m looking for collaborators or reviewing someone’s profile, the first thing I do is Google them. If nothing comes up — no website, no Scholar profile, no trace of their work — it’s a red flag, not because they’re a bad researcher, but because I can’t evaluate them.
This article is for graduate students and early-career researchers who want to build a professional online presence. It’s not about self-promotion for its own sake — it’s about making your work discoverable and accessible to the people who matter.
Table of Contents
- Why Online Presence Matters for Researchers
- Google Scholar: Your Most Important Profile
- Building a Personal Academic Website
- Academic Social Media: Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and ResearchGate
- Blogging for Researchers: What I’ve Learned from Datanalytics101
- ORCID and Other Academic Identifiers
- What to Post (and What Not To)
- A Minimum Viable Online Presence
- Time Management: This Shouldn’t Take Over Your Research
- Common Mistakes
- Final Words
Why Online Presence Matters for Researchers
In the age of Google, your online presence is your first impression. Here’s who is looking you up:
Potential collaborators who found your paper and want to know more about your other work.
Hiring committees evaluating your postdoc or faculty application. They will Google you.
Conference organizers looking for speakers, panelists, or session chairs.
Students looking for advisors or research groups to join.
Journalists and science communicators looking for experts to quote.
Funding agencies reviewing your grant application and checking your track record.
If you don’t have an online presence, you’re invisible to all of these people. And in a competitive field like AI for Medicine, visibility matters.
Google Scholar: Your Most Important Profile
If you do nothing else from this article, set up a Google Scholar profile. It takes 10 minutes and has an outsized impact on your discoverability.
Why Google Scholar matters:
- It’s the first result that shows up when someone searches your name + “research”
- It automatically aggregates your citations and computes your h-index
- It makes your publication list searchable and linked
- It sends you email alerts when someone cites your work
How to set it up:
- Go to scholar.google.com and click “My Profile”
- Sign in with your Google account
- Add your affiliation, research interests (choose 5-6 keywords)
- Add a professional photo
- Verify your institutional email
- Review the auto-detected publications and add any that are missing
Maintenance tips:
- Check quarterly for new publications that need to be verified or merged
- Remove any incorrectly attributed papers
- Keep your affiliation current (update when you move institutions)
- Choose specific research interests, not generic ones — “Clinical NLP” and “Medical AI” are better than “Machine Learning” and “Deep Learning”
Building a Personal Academic Website
A personal website is your online CV, portfolio, and research summary in one place. It’s also fully under your control, unlike social media platforms.
What to include:
- Home/About page: 2-3 paragraphs about who you are, your current position, and your research interests. Include a professional photo.
- Publications page: A complete list of your publications with links to PDFs, code, and project pages. Organize by year, reverse chronological.
- Research page (optional but recommended): Brief descriptions of your research projects with figures. This is more accessible than the publications list for non-experts.
- CV/Resume: A downloadable PDF of your full academic CV.
- Contact information: Your institutional email and links to your profiles (Scholar, LinkedIn, GitHub).
Platforms I recommend:
- GitHub Pages + Jekyll/Hugo: Free, version-controlled, fully customizable. This is what I use (my portfolio is at roysoumya.github.io). There are excellent academic templates like “al-folio” for Jekyll.
- Google Sites: Simple and free. Good for a minimal presence if you don’t want to deal with code.
- WordPress: More customizable than Google Sites, still relatively simple.
- Squarespace/Wix: Polished but costs money. Unnecessary for most academics.
How much time to invest: Building a basic site takes 3-4 hours with a template. Updating it takes about 30 minutes per month — just add new publications and update your status.
Academic Social Media: Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and ResearchGate
Each platform serves a different purpose. You don’t need to be active on all of them.
Twitter/X
The academic conference happens on Twitter. Researchers share paper threads, live-tweet conferences, announce positions, and build informal networks.
When to use it:
- Sharing your published papers with a brief thread explaining the key contributions
- Live-tweeting conferences you attend
- Following researchers in your area
- Engaging with discussions about research trends
When NOT to use it:
- Engaging in personal arguments or political debates (keep your academic account professional)
- Spending more than 20 minutes per day (it’s addictive)
My honest take: I have mixed feelings about academic Twitter. It’s valuable for visibility but can be a time sink. If you engage, do so intentionally — post about your work, comment on papers you’ve read, and resist the urge to scroll endlessly.
More important than many academics realize, especially if you’re considering industry positions.
Essential setup:
- Professional headline (“Postdoc at Stanford Medicine | Medical AI | NLP”)
- Summary section describing your research
- Publications listed
- Skills endorsed by colleagues
When to use it:
- Sharing major career updates (new position, paper acceptance, award)
- Connecting with industry researchers and professionals
- Job searching
ResearchGate
Less important than it used to be, but still useful for:
- Making your publications available (full text)
- Connecting with researchers who cite your work
- Following specific projects
I’d prioritize Google Scholar and a personal website over ResearchGate, but maintain a profile if you have one.
Blogging for Researchers: What I’ve Learned from Datanalytics101
Running this blog has been one of the most impactful career decisions I’ve made. But it’s not for everyone.
What blogging has done for me:
- Built a community of readers who reach out for collaborations and advice
- Forced me to clarify my thinking (writing is thinking)
- Created a portfolio that demonstrates communication skills
- Helped me give back to the research community, especially in India
Who should consider blogging:
- If you enjoy writing and explaining concepts
- If you frequently answer the same questions from junior students
- If you want to establish expertise in a specific niche
Who shouldn’t feel pressured to blog:
- If writing feels like a chore that takes away from your research
- If you don’t have a specific audience or niche in mind
- If you’re early in your career and haven’t yet developed deep expertise
Practical advice if you start a blog:
- Pick a niche. “AI research” is too broad. “AI for Medicine, with a focus on Indian researchers” is specific enough to attract a loyal audience.
- Write about what you know from experience, not just what you’ve read. Personal experience is what differentiates your blog from a textbook.
- Quality over quantity. One excellent article per month is better than four mediocre ones.
- Cross-link with your academic work. Every blog post should connect to your research, publications, or professional experience.
ORCID and Other Academic Identifiers
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a unique identifier for researchers. Think of it as a permanent academic ID number.
Why you need one:
- Disambiguates you from other researchers with the same name (particularly important for common Indian names)
- Integrates with journals, grant applications, and institutional profiles
- Many journals now require an ORCID during submission
- It’s free and takes 5 minutes to set up
Other identifiers:
- Scopus Author ID: Automatically assigned if you have publications indexed by Scopus
- Web of Science Researcher ID: Useful for tracking citation metrics
- DBLP: The CS-specific bibliography database. Check that your entries are correct.
A Minimum Viable Online Presence
If you’re short on time, here’s the absolute minimum:
1. Google Scholar profile (10 minutes to set up, 15 minutes quarterly to maintain)
2. A simple personal website (3-4 hours to set up, 30 minutes monthly to update)
3. Updated LinkedIn profile (30 minutes to set up, minimal maintenance)
That’s it. These three things make you discoverable, professional, and evaluable. Everything else — Twitter, blogging, ResearchGate — is optional and additive.
Time Management: This Shouldn’t Take Over Your Research
The biggest risk of building an online presence is that it becomes a procrastination tool. “I need to update my website” feels productive but doesn’t advance your research.
My approach:
- I usually target weekend mornings for website and profile maintenance
- I share papers on social media only when they’re actually published (not daily updates)
- I write blog posts during periods when I’m between projects or waiting for reviews — not during active research sprints
The 90/10 rule: Spend 90% of your time on research and 10% on visibility. Not the other way around.
Common Mistakes
Mistake 1: No online presence at all. This is the most common mistake among Indian PhD students. “My work will speak for itself” is not how the academic world works in 2025.
Mistake 2: An outdated website. A website from 2020 with your B.Tech projects is worse than no website. Either keep it current or take it down.
Mistake 3: Overinvesting in social media. Spending 2 hours daily on Twitter won’t compensate for a lack of publications. Publications come first. Visibility amplifies them.
Mistake 4: Using your institutional website as your only presence. When you change institutions, that page disappears. Maintain your own domain or GitHub Pages site.
Mistake 5: Inconsistent naming. Use the same name format across all profiles. If you publish as “S. Roy,” make sure your Google Scholar, website, and LinkedIn all use the same format. Consistency aids discoverability.
Final Words
Building an online presence is a professional necessity in modern academia. The researchers who get the best postdoc offers, the most speaking invitations, and the strongest collaborations are not always those with the best papers. They’re the ones whose work is known.
Start small. Set up your Google Scholar profile today. Build a simple website this weekend. Share your next accepted paper with a brief thread. These small investments compound over time.
If you’re building your research career from scratch, pair this article with my guides on mentorship, soft skills, and articulating your research value. Together, they give you a comprehensive toolkit for navigating the early stages of a research career.
Related articles that may be of interest to you
- Beyond the CV: How to Articulate Your Research Value in an Interview
- 10 Essential Soft Skills for Grad Students
- Mentorship 101: What to Look for in a Research Mentor
- How I Secured a Research Associate Position in Germany
Discover more from Medical AI Insights
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.