This case study aims to investigate the implementation of an online researcher tools platform to increase the impact of the University of Pretoria’s scholarly activities by exposing and promoting researchers’ online visibility and impact. In an increasingly competitive research publishing environment, new ways of communicating scientific discoveries have emerged that use open science platforms, also known as researcher profile platforms. Researcher tools digitally store links, publish and disseminate research outputs for researchers and embrace open access principles to increase the visibility and impact of both the researcher and their research outputs.

Researcher profile tools list links of publications, and datasets while synchronised or can be hyperlinked to publishers' databases, funder databases, repositories, research information management systems, and commercial bibliometric systems i.e. web of science, Scopus, dimensions, and altmetric, etc. In this study, a researcher’s profile template will be used to collect researcher data about which research tools they have created, i.e ORCiD, Google scholar, Scopus, Web of Science Publons, Dimensions, and institutional repositories. The paper will also establish the adoption of ORCiD in university’s research ecology, vs. other researchers' social platforms such as Google Scholar, ResearchGate, LinkedIn, and Academia.edu.

It is envisaged that researchers will benefit from this study if they would promote their works via the online profiles as complementary to other dissemination and discovery services on the Internet, and encouraged to: i.e., researchers will develop and manage their specific research niche. In this area, the Library’s scholarly research support service will assist researchers to:- 1) circulate their research outputs, 2) promote their research outputs in this way will also help protect their intellectual property and be encouraged them to collaborate with other researchers across geographic and multi-disciplinary borders, 3) develop search engine optimization of metadata for their research outputs, 4) clearly and easily associate their research outputs with the University of Pretoria, be a concerted effort to help researchers’ regularly update their ORCID profiles to reflect new outputs, 5) publish in more open access journals, and 6) manage and control their digital footprint and reach of their research outputs to influence readership, citations and altmetrics.

The study hopes to generate a framework that will anchor the various research analytical tools used to assess and encourage researchers to be digital natives and self-promote their online presence. This will show how researchers and libraries can collaborate to support the impact and visibility of a university’s research outputs and researchers’ activities.