# Fileset

[selfarch.pdf](https://mdr.nims.go.jp/filesets/57c681eb-a8ed-462c-92ee-78d36baf238f/download)

## Creator

[TODOROKI, Shin-ichi](https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3986-1900)

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## Other metadata

[Disseminate your work beyond your research field through self-archiving](https://mdr.nims.go.jp/datasets/65174ad7-726a-4b63-8331-fede45acbe55)

## Fulltext

Disseminate your work beyond your research field through self-archivingDisseminate your work beyond your research fieldthrough self-archivingS. Todoroki∗November 18, 2008AbstractA research paper that I presented in English at a material informatics workshop caught aJapanese linguist’s eye. This is because I self-archived its Japanese translation thus making acces-sible to him on the net without any language barrier. An analysis of visits to my homepage overthe past four years reveals that they are closely related to my publications in domestic journals.Self-archive your work in your native languageWeb search engines have become indispensable tools. Our typical first action when we want to knowmore about something is to type some key words in our native language into a search engine window.This is also true in our scientific research activities even if we admit English is the standard languageof science. It is difficult to abandon the language that we know best.The reverse is also true. As non-native speakers of English, we always encounter a languagebarrier when disseminating our work. Although we publish original papers in academic journals inEnglish, the potential readers are usually limited to researchers within our specialist areas. To providethose outside our fields with some idea of our activities, we should try to deliver it in our mothertongue. Therefore, we should not disregard requests for contributions to domestic journals. Thepublication of your manuscript on the net, if the publisher permits it, will attract new readers viasearch engines.Recently, this self-archiving service has become affordable for ordinary researchers. Institutionalrepositories provide this service for those in universities and research institutes. Others can uploadtheir articles to document sharing websites such asscribd.com known as the “YouTube for docu-ments”. This article focuses on native language dissemination via self-archiving.Self-archiving attracts visitors to your websiteI set up my homepage in 1995 and began self-archiving there in 2000. Figure 1 shows cumulativepage views (thick line) and my publications, which consist of peer-reviewed papers in English (bluesquares) and non-peer-reviewed and self-archived articles in Japanese (red circles). The relationshipbetween these data seems obvious. However, I found certain interesting correlations after a detailedexamination.In July 2007, I published an essay in the bulletin of an academic society that described usefulideas for managing manuscript writing activities†. At the same time, I published the corresponding∗National Institute for Materials Science, JAPANhttp://www.geocities.jp/tokyo1406/†English translation is available[1].1http://www.scribd.com�http://www.geocities.jp/tokyo_1406/�Disseminate your work beyond your research field through self-archiving / S. TodorokiFigure 1: Page view progression of my homepage (thick line, right ordinate) and the cumulativetotal of my papers (left ordinate;¤ peer-reviewed in English,◦ not reviewed in Japanese, and•consecutive issues). The inset graph shows the number of blog posts that mention my paper [2](¥);F posts in English or Portuguese and✩ in Japanese. The vertical arrows (1)–(3) show the correlationbetween these plots (see text).manuscript file on my homepage and posted an announcement to a bulletin board unrelated to thesociety but aimed at people who may be interested in my article. Consequently, the total page views ina month was about 700 more than usual (see arrow (1)). This means that the announcement attractedadditional readers equivalent to about 10 % of the journal’s circulation of 6000 copies per month.Since most of these extra readers would have had no opportunity to see the original article, the effectof self-archiving of is worth noting.Self-archiving also resulted in a series of invitations to submit contributions. The closed circles inFig. 1 after February 2007 show the publication of consecutive issues. The first editor to contact mesaid that she took her cue from my previous articles on the net (see arrow (2)). Since then, I have hadregular opportunities to publish serially in certain domestic journals.Frequent publication brought about a steady increase in visits to my homepage. The thin line withcircles in Fig. 1 shows that my self-archived publication of Japanese articles began to increase aftermid 2006. This is followed by the increase in page views shown by the thick line, which was becausethese articles contain references to my self-archived papers with Uniform Resource Locators (URLs).On the other hand, there is no correlation between the page views and the number of peer-reviewedarticles in English, shown by the thin line with squares. This is natural because of our behaviorwith respect to academic journals. We generally look for references in their original rather their self-archived form. Thus, few readers of my papers in English will visit my homepage in order to findcited papers.Translation promotes dissemination of your workAfter giving a talk on blog-based research notebook at an international workshop on materials in-formatics in December 2004, a corresponding peer-reviewed paper in English[2] was published on2Disseminate your work beyond your research field through self-archiving / S. Todorokiline in September 2005 (closed square in Fig. 1). Immediately, I uploaded a Japanese translation onmy homepage for the convenience of domestic readers. As a result, three young Japanese scientistsintroduced the paper on their blogs (open stars in Fig. 1). Then, I compiled a list of links to their blogson my homepage. The list may have led to further publicity about my work on the net; the translationwas cited in the article“research notebook”in Wikipedia in Japanese in October 2007.Subsequently, a post-doctoral fellow in linguistics read the article and posted a comment on thetranslation to his blog in May 2008. This dissemination beyond the border of specialty is partlybecause the topic dealt with in the original paper is not restricted to materials science. The most im-portant point is that the self-archived translation attracted the attention of young Japanese researchersvia Internet.It is better to self-archive your work in your mother tongue first because this makes it easy fordomestic readers to respond. The response then gives you an impetus to continue self-archiving. Inmy case, the series of blog posts encouraged me to translate my Japanese articles into English[3].Fifteen months later, I found an article introducing my translation in a Spanish science blog. That isthe joy of self-archiving.References[1] S. Todoroki: “Manuscript writing support system for researchers based on hypertext list of theirachievements” (2008). (Translated fromCeramics Japan, 42 [7] pp. 520–524 (2007)).[2] S. Todoroki, T. Konishi and S. Inoue: “Blog-based research notebook: personal informatics work-bench for high-throughput experimentation”, Appl. Surface Sci.,252[7] pp. 2640–2645 (2006).[3] S. Todoroki: “Two serendipitous episodes — How I embarked on fiber fuse research” (2007).(Translated from 2 articles;Electric Glass, 35 pp. 14–18, 2006 andIndustrial Materials, 55 [4]pp. 97–101, 2007)Annotation• The original article in Japanese will be published inMaterials Integration, 21 [12] (2008).• All the references including the originals and their translations are self-archived. You can findthem via search engines.3http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%AE%9F%E9%A8%93%E3%83%8E%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88�http://www.tic-mi.com/publ/mi_new.html�