MADELINE G. EPPLEY
  • ABOUT
  • CV
  • RESEARCH
  • PRESENTATIONS + PUBLICATIONS
  • AWARDS + GRANTS
  • TEACHING
  • Inclusivity
  • BLOG
  • NEWS

Blog 

Protocols for Building Academic Websites

6/18/2024

0 Comments

 
My new website, madeline-eppley.github.io is published! This is a secondary website that will serve as a protocols repository with my digital lab notebook, coding and bioinformatics tutorials, and online resources for graduate students and academics. 

Some of the first content that I have developed is for building personal academic websites. I review options for choosing where to build and host your website, describe content to include, and provide instructions for building a free Quarto website using GitHub and RStudio. 

Why build personal academic websites? 
Traditional metrics (e.g. citations) by which scientists are evaluated are deeply biased and perpetuate exclusionary networks (Davies et al. 2021). These traditional metrics of "success" directly influence career advancement opportunities, funding, awards, distinctions, tenure, and more. Altmetrics, or alternative metrics, (e.g. social media activity, news articles, interviews, etc.) offer an alternative method for quantitative evaluation. Altmetrics aid in recognizing that valuable scientific impact takes many forms, including equitable communication and translation of science to general audiences (Davies et al 2021). Personal websites positively drive altmetrics, meaning that scientists can directly benefit from having a strong online presence in social media, websites, or press (Peoples et al. 2016). Promoting and evaluating scientific work in diverse ways dismantles perpetuating bias and reliance on traditional citation metrics (Davies et al. 2021). 

Beyond this, personal academic websites offer the most complete opportunity to tell the story of yourself and your scientific work. By maintaining a personal website, you have control over keeping URLs, publications, email addresses, and CVs up-to-date, whereas an institutional page may not do so for you. You are also able to link research results, media and press, grant funding, and pictures all together in one place to engage in scientific storytelling with your audience (Figure 1). Funding bodies are now recognizing the value of this type of communication with general audiences, communities, and stakeholders, so having a personal website displays commitment to this broadening values system in science. It's a no-brainer!
Picture
Figure 1. Academic website content has three main categories: Research, Science Communication, and Networking
My associated GitHub repository that I used to build my Quarto website is publicly accessible here: github.com/madeline-eppley/madeline-eppley.github.io/tree/main. 
Citations 
1. Davies SW, Putnam HM, Ainsworth T, Baum JK, Bove CB, Crosby SC, et al. (2021) Promoting inclusive metrics of success and impact to dismantle a discriminatory reward system in science. PLoS Biol 19(6): e3001282. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001282
​2. Peoples BK, Midway SR, Sackett D, Lynch A, Cooney PB (2016) Twitter Predicts Citation Rates of Ecological Research. PLoS ONE 11(11): e0166570. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0166570
0 Comments
    ALL NEWS

    Archives

    December 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024

    Tags

    All
    ADNA
    AMNH
    Awards
    Fisheries
    Genetics
    Genomics
    GitHub
    Grants
    Marine Science
    News
    Oysters
    Parasites
    Preprints
    Protocols
    Science Communication
    Websites
    Workshops

Let's get in touch!
Copyright Madeline Eppley, 2025

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We acknowledge the territory on which Northeastern University’s Marine Science Center stands, which is the land of the Mattakeeset tribe (1) of the Massachuset Nation (2,5) and which has been inhabited by the Pawtucket (3,5) and Naumkeag (4,5) people. We honor and respect these peoples' past, present, and future, their continuing presence in this region, and the enduring relationships that exist between them and these lands. We strive to be mindful of these relationships, and to integrate them into our research, teaching, decision-making, and actions, while also acknowledging that we still have much to learn.   

​Citations:  
1.      
https://www.mattakeeset.com/history   
2.      
https://accessgenealogy.com/massachusetts/massachuset-tribe.htm   
3.      
https://capeannhistory.org/index.php/chapter-5-what-native-people-were-on-cape-ann-at-the-time-of-contact-and-where-did-they-come-from/   
4.      
http://www.salemhistorical.org/massachusetts-indigenous-community-resources
​5.       https://native-land.ca/ 
  • ABOUT
  • CV
  • RESEARCH
  • PRESENTATIONS + PUBLICATIONS
  • AWARDS + GRANTS
  • TEACHING
  • Inclusivity
  • BLOG
  • NEWS