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UWA Profiles and Research Repository Support

Guidance for setting up your UWA Profile and adding publications to your profile and the Repository.

Using your UWA Profile for Outreach

Your UWA profile provides a valuable opportunity to promote yourself and your research to industry and external partners.

UWA Staff

UWA HDR Students

Whether you are academic or professional staff use your UWA Profile to showcase how your research and professional expertise can specifically address issues, problems, and solutions required across different social and commercial scenarios.

Your future professional role as a researcher and evidence-based practitioner will increasingly depend on your engagement and networking with external partners and research end-users during your candidature.

Why outreach to industry and external partners?

  • Create impact and translate your research into practice
  • Diversify funding opportunities and leverage opportunities for government funding
  • Build a track record of funding and project management
  • HDRs can promote activities and achievements toward encouraging internships  

How does your UWA Profile help?

  • Increases visibility and allows industry professionals and other find you
  • Allows UWA Staff from the Office of Research and GRS to refer and external industry contacts to you
  • Acts as proof point to demonstrate experience and expertise to potential partners

Using your UWA Profile to attract industry and external partners

Industry, government and not for profits often have different priorities and perspectives than academics, so it's important to communicate your research in a way that resonates with their interests and needs. 

By following these guidelines, you can create a UWA Profile that effectively communicates your value to industry professionals and increases your chances of attracting industry collaborations and opportunities.

  1. Understand Your Audience: Research and understand the specific industry or industries you want to appeal to. Identify their pain points, challenges, and goals.
  2. Simplify Your Language: Avoid jargon and complex academic terminology. Use plain language that can be easily understood by a broader non-academic audience.
  3. Provide links to your LinkedIn and relevant web presence or social media: Consider using multimedia elements like videos, infographics, or images to visually convey the key points of your research and make your profile more engaging.
  4. Keep it brief: Don't create an overly long or verbose profile. Industry professionals often prefer concise, to-the-point information.
  5. Update Regularly: Don't let your profile become stagnant. Regularly update it with new research findings, collaborations, or industry-related achievements to demonstrate your ongoing relevance.

Work through the following tabs for specific tips on optimising your UWA Profile to attract industry and external partners. See also the Using your UWA Profile for Outreach handout (PDF) and the Raising your Profile webinar recording on the last tab. 

The "Overview" area in your UWA Profile is the first area your potential industry and external audience will land on to learn about you. As well as following the basic requirements of setting up your profile covered in this guide, here are some ideas for how you can further utilise your Overview page to attract external partners.

  1. Include a compelling summary within your biography: Crafting a concise and engaging summary at the beginning of your profile within your biography heading is crucial.  Don't leave potential external partners wondering about the potential benefits of collaborating with you. Clearly communicate the value you can bring to industry and society through your research.  Don't dwell on theoretical concepts or research methodologies without connecting them to practical applications or potential industry and social benefits. See the Your Biography step in this guide for instructions for adding your biography. 

  2. Add Industry relevance, Community Engagement, Role and Responsibilities sections: In addition to your biography, you can add dedicated sections to your Overview page. See instructions for adding these sections on the Your Biography page in this guide. Some exemplary biographies and profile overviews are provided in the Raising your UWA Profile handout, and here are some ideas for how to use these sections effectively:

  • Clearly state your research interests and areas of expertise to help external partners quickly identify whether your research aligns with their needs or interests.
  • Use industry relevance to emphasise practical applications and real-world relevance of your research. How can it address industry or societal challenges or improve processes?
  • Include case studies, examples, or success stories within community & government engagement to illustrate how your research has or can be applied in industry or social settings
  • Highlight the skills and competencies you've developed through your research and industry engagements relevant to industry, such as data analysis, project management, or problem-solving within roles & responsibilities.
  • Perhaps use your overview section to provide a lay interpretation of your significant research publications.

  1. Add Industry keywords: Use the Industry Keywords function to add a summary of keywords that describe how your research links with community and industry needs and to improve discoverability in search results. These will be displayed at the top of your UWA Profile overview together with your “Research Expertise” keywords and support search results for your UWA Profile.  

  2. Include a call to action: Show you are open to collaboration opportunities and invite industry to contact you within your Overview page. Here are some examples of calls to action:

“I am enthusiastic about fostering collaborative partnerships with industry professionals, and I welcome inquiries from industry leaders interested in exploring mutually beneficial research and innovation opportunities.”

“I am open to industry collaborations and look forward to connecting with potential partners.”

“If you are interested in innovative solutions for [specific topic(s)], I welcome the opportunity to connect and explore potential collaborations.”

There is a broad range of publication and content types that you can add to your UWA Profile.  Even if you have not yet begun to publish in scholarly journals about your research, these alternative publication types can be important to an external audience. Here are some examples of the kind of industry-related content you could add:

  • Research outputs: This isn't limited to traditional scholarly outputs, and many non-traditional research outputs can be added to your profile. For example, government policy, technical reports, policy statements, working papers, newsletters, government documents, speeches, white papers, urban plans and more. See the instructions in this guide for adding publications. 

  •  Awards and Honours you have received are important to include particularly those related to your research contributions or collaborations with industry. See the instructions in this guide on adding awards and prizes. 

  • Engagement activities could include any research internships, collaborative projects, partnerships, scholarships, grants, or research conducted in collaboration with industry partners. There is a dedicated set of Industry and government engagement/consultancy templates that you can use to record your involvement in other industry-related events, committees, conferences, and advisory boards. Add your public speaking and media engagements, especially if you've given talks or presentations to industry audiences. Mention any outreach efforts, such as workshops or seminars you've conducted for industry professionals. See the instructions in this guide on adding engagement activities.

This is a recording of a 2023 webinar offered by the University Library and the Office of Industry and Commercial Development. It offers guidance on how to craft your UWA Profil to promote your experience and capabilities to industry and external partners. 

Further support

For more information and guidance on engaging with industry and external partners contact the Office of Industry and Commercial Development at industry@uwa.edu.au

For support editing your profile, contact with the Library at staffsupport-lib@uwa.edu.au or hdrsupport-lib@uwa.edu.au.

CONTENT LICENCE

 Except for logos, Canva designs or where otherwise indicated, content in this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence.