In the good old days, LinkedIn was just for the corporate world. Increasingly, though, it’s becoming an essential part of your academic web presence. Publishers, funders, employers, collaborators, and participants all expect to find your profile. Given its commercial emphasis, how can you make LinkedIn serve your research interests? In this guide, I’ll walk you through the main sections of a LinkedIn profile and suggest how you can use it to your best advantage.

Before we start, it’s important to emphasise that there’s no “right way” to use LinkedIn. And how you use it depends on what you’re trying to achieve: find employment, recruit researchers, increase the visibility of your research. Although you might have several aims, it’s best to make one your priority - that way, it’s easier to measure whether you’ve been successful. Think about who’s in your network and what they want to see.

Keep that priority in mind when you’re planning the sections below.

🔒 A note on privacy: LinkedIn allows you to control what’s visible on your profile and to whom. For instance, you can decide whether your details are visible only to connections, or can be accessed by anyone (even those without a LinkedIn account). This is especially important f you’re working on sensitive projects or don’t want to be too conspicuous. It’s a good idea to routinely check these settings to ensure they’re still appropriate and haven’t reverted to defaults. You can find them under Settings > Visibility.

Contact info

Even if you decide never to engage or post on LinkedIn, including contact information is a good way of increasing your network. You can also use this space to signpost your wider web presence.

Although you can include your address and phone number, you almost certainly don’t want to do this. It could be worth including your email address, though, especially if you don’t like LinkedIn’s messaging system or forget to check it. If you want people to contact you, this removes some of the friction.

🔒 Under Settings > Visibility, you can control who has access to those contact details.

The most useful section here is Add Website. Here you could add up to three links to:

  • Your university profile (for credibility) 🥸
  • Institutional repositories (for making your research visible)
  • ORCID (presenting your research-related achievements for funders)
  • Open Access sites such as Zenodo or Knowledge Commons (sharing your outputs)
  • GitHub (sharing and collaborating on code)

Photo

In the AI age, it’s important to emphasise that you’re a human. Upload a recent, professional-looking headshot. Don’t use wedding photos, unless you normally wear a bow tie or a fascinator. Use the same photo across all your academic websites. That way, people start to recognise you and connect your achievements.

Cover image

The cover image sits at the top of your profile, so it’s the first element people will see. Although they might not scrutinise it in detail, it’s contributing to their overall impression of you. You can use this space to reinforce the researcher identity you want to establish. For example:

  • A photo of you giving a keynote address.
  • A research-related image, such as books, engines, or paintings.

You can find images through websites such as Canva, Unsplash, and Pexels.

Headline

The headline text appears immediately below your photo. You get just 220 characters in which to give a sense of yourself. This should be optimised for your LinkedIn priority. For instance, if you’re applying for funding, you can use this space to reinforce your bid.

Everyone uses this space in a different way. Broadly, though, you want to address the following points:

  • This is who I am (researcher/practitioner/professor).
  • This is what I do.
  • This is where I do it.

You could use a full sentence, or individual points, separated by the | character. It’s also up to you whether you lead with your position or your research. For example:

  • “Innovative interdisciplinary researcher with a strong track record of delivering software projects in the healthcare sector.”
  • Senior Lecturer at [University Name] | Interdisciplinary researcher in health informatics | Delivering projects that improve patient outcomes
  • Investigating how digital health solutions improve patient outcomes | Senior Lecturer in Health Informatics at [University Name]

Experiment and see what feels right to you 🧪

About

In the About section, you get 2,600 characters in which to present yourself. Although that’s a lot more space than the Headline, you still need to use it wisely. Don’t just include your standard academic biography. One of the main advantages of LinkedIn is that it allows you to make connections beyond academia. Technical jargon and acronyms create barriers that’ll work against you. Make sure everyone understands the value of what you’re doing.

Here’s a suggested outline for your About section:

  • Opening statement - One sentence establishing your academic identity and research focus.
  • Current research - What you’re working on and why it matters.
  • Core expertise - Your areas of specialisation (no more than 3).
  • Key achievements - 2-3 specific accomplishments.
  • How to connect and collaborate - What you’re open to (speaking engagements/consultancy/collaborations) + how to reach you.

Don’t forget the call to action at the end. If you genuinely want to hear from people, then say so!

Take a look at this (completely fictional) example to see how it might work:

  • Opening statement: I’m an interdisciplinary researcher investigating how digital health solutions can improve patient outcomes and healthcare delivery.
  • Current research: My current work addresses how healthcare organisations can implement software systems that enhance clinical decision-making. I’m leading a multi-site study with 12 NHS trusts to identify factors that support successful technology adoption and sustained patient benefit.
  • Core expertise: My research focuses on health informatics, clinical software implementation, and user-centred design for healthcare settings. I specialise in mixed-methods approaches combining system usability testing with clinician and patient interviews.
  • Key achievements:
    • Developed a patient monitoring platform that reduced hospital readmissions by 35% across 8 pilot sites (published in Journal of Medical Internet Research, now being scaled to 20 additional hospitals).
    • Secured £250,000 NIHR funding to examine digital health interventions for chronic disease management.
    • Collaborated with NHS Digital to translate research findings into implementation guidance, supporting technology rollout across 15 trusts.
  • How to connect and collaborate: I’m open to speaking engagements on digital health implementation, consultancy with healthcare organisations, and research collaborations exploring health technology adoption. Contact me at [email] or through LinkedIn.

Your About section isn’t an academic paper, so use simple, short sentences. You can also break it up with bullet points and white space. Again, make sure you update it to reflect your current research priority.

Experience

The Experience section is where you include your employment history, including dates and names of companies/institutions. You don’t need to include everything here - it’s not a CV. But if you apply for jobs through LinkedIn, it can save you some time.

For each position, include an example that’s relevant to what you’re trying to achieve with your LinkedIn presence, such as successful projects. You can use the STAR format to make these examples stronger and more consistent:

  • Situation (or problem)
  • Task (or mission/challenge)
  • Action (what you did)
  • Results (or outcome/impact)

If you’ve been working for a long time, consider keeping your description to one sentence for your early jobs. Nobody’s going to scroll down to find out what you were up to in 1990. Focus on including compelling examples in your most recent positions.

Education

As a researcher, it’s crucial for you to establish your academic credentials. But there’s no need to share where you went to school. Indeed, including those details can pose a security risk.1 If you have a PhD, nobody wants to know about your GCSEs or A-Levels. Include:

  • Undergraduate degrees
  • Masters’ degrees (and other relevant postgraduate qualifications, such as PGCE)
  • PhD

In the description field, foreground any modules or projects that are relevant to what you’re doing now.

Licenses and Certifications

Logging your Certifications on LinkedIn is a good way of demonstrating your commitment to professional development. Here’s where you can include online courses or licenses (typically, courses that include an exam). This feature is integrated with LinkedIn Learning, so any courses you complete there automatically show up on your profile. you can also easily share certificates and credentials from other major learning platforms, such as Udemy and Coursera.

Publications

The Publications section might seem like the obvious area to talk about your research outputs. However, this is likely to be duplicated effort. Nobody wants to read a long laundry list of everything you’ve written here. If they do need your full publication history, it’s better to point them to your university profile, repository, or ORCID page. You can link to these sites from your Contact Info.

Instead, use the Publication section to promote your three most important outputs. For example, a monograph, a journal article with a high impact score, or a report that’s relevant to your current research project. You can rotate the examples according to your priorities.

While Publications is specifically for written outputs, Featured lets you showcase any content type that demonstrates your expertise or impact. This could include:

  • A LinkedIn post that attracted a lot of attention.
  • Journal articles that were widely cited.
  • Videos of you giving a talk or demonstrating your practice.
  • Websites or repositories for projects you’re working on.

Although you can add an unlimited number of features, less is more. In fact, one feature is enough. This way, it’ll be more prominent.

Projects

The Projects section is good for showcasing the range of your research projects, and also demonstrating that you’re an active researcher. You can include start and end dates, allowing you to build a track record. Including current projects creates accountability, too. There’s always the risk of someone asking how you’re getting on 🙀

Although there’s a generous limit of 2,000 characters, keep it brief and focussed. You can include images to make it more appealing.

Skills

The Skills section is a fairly indigestible list of up to 50 skills that you want to be known for. You can also assign these skills to specific experience and projects, and highlight the top 5 in your About section. What you include here depends on your priorities. If you now want to be known purely as a researcher, don’t use up your allowance with teaching-related skills. And avoid anything too common. For instance, unfortunately most of us are obliged to be proficient with Microsoft Office. It’s much better to include niche tools, such as NVivo, or programming languages like Python.

Recommendations

The Recommendations section provides an opportunity for social proof. You can ask other LinkedIn members to recommend you by providing a short testimonial. Think carefully before proceeding, though. Ask yourself:

  • Is this person happy to recommend me? Would it make them feel uncomfortable or add to their heavy workload?
  • Are LinkedIn recommendations valuable for what I’m trying to achieve? Will I also need to ask that person for a formal reference (thereby doubling their effort)?
  • Would I be prepared to reciprocate? Do I have time?

Keep in mind that you’re asking a favour. Recommendations can be effective when there’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. For example, if you give an unpaid guest lecture for another institution, it’s reasonable to ask them to recommend you. That way, they get your time, and you get an endorsement that reinforces your public speaking credentials.

Conclusion

Crafting a strong LinkedIn profile takes time - and it’s not a case of “set it and forget it”, either. You need to make sure it’s up-to-date and relevant to your current research priority. But if you consider how each section can work for you, this is time well spent. Once you a strong profile in place, you can start deciding what to post. With over 1 billion users, LinkedIn can help you reach a much wider audience. Remember: there’s no right way to use LinkedIn - just a way that works for you and your research.

👉 LinkedIn without Tears: A Guide for Academics

This content is part of my workshop on Creating a Strong Academic LinkedIn Profile

  1. The name of your first school is a common question in password-recovery processes. ↩︎