1. COLLABORATE. The more authors a paper has the more citations it will receive. You will get more if you have co-authors from other institutions. International co-authors are especially likely to produce more citations. In addition, the number of international collaborators and non-academic collaborators is now an indicator in some rankings.
2. GETTING MORE CITATIONS. You have more chance of getting cited if you cite the important researchers in your field, if you are published in high impact journals, if you include prominent researchers in your network and if you can show that your paper is contributing to advancing a research program.
3. SELF-CITATION. Citing yourself is OK in moderation and when appropriate but it creates a bad impression if you do it too much. The same applies to citing your colleagues. You can cite them when appropriate but not too much. Some rankers remove self-citations from their citation counts.
4. FEMALE WRITERS sometimes like to use initials to avoid discrimination in publication or citation. But recent studies show that this is no longer a significant problem in most disciplines. In addition, some rankings now count the number of female authors as an indicator.
5. UNIVERSITY NAMES. Make sure you always use the correct name of the university as your affiliation. If you need to give more than one affiliation, put the university first. Even top universities have lost dozens of publications because of this.
6. NAMES. Always use the same form of your name so that your work is always correctly attributed to you. If you want to use initials to avoid confusion with another writer with a common name, be consistent about it. If you must change your names because of marriage or some other legal reason, make sure that the alternate names are recorded in Scopus and Web of Science.
