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Scholarly Impact Challenge

About the Challenge

The scholarly Impact 5-Day Challenge is an opportunity to improve the discoverability of your research and yourself in the online academic community.  

The easier it is for your colleagues to find your work and learn of your interests, the more likely you are to be cited and read.  Join the Research Impact Challenge to increase the impact and reach of your scholarly research by enhancing your MyActivities profile and making it public in the UICollaboratory.  To complete the challenge, engage in the activities describe on each tab of this guide.   Contact myactivities@uic.edu if you have any questions.  

The challenge will run from March 27 to April 7.   You can complete this challenge at your own pace: all in one setting, across several days, or over a week.    

MyActivities is a faculty activity management tool which allows your activities and research productivity to be entered once, then the information can be aggregated and reused as needed for annual reviews, to populate CVs, track your publication metrics, prepare for promotion and tenure, and find collaborators for grants and programs.  MyActivities automatically populates most of your grant and publication data and courses taught.  

Challenge Deadline and Drawing

The deadline to complete the challenge and be included in a drawing for a prize is April 7.    At the end of the Impact Challenge, a report will be run in MyActivities that indicates completion for various activities.    All those who have completed the activities from all 5 days will have their name entered into a drawing. 

You do not need to submit anything to be included in the drawing.   25 names will be drawn from the list of faculty who complete the challenge.  A $100 Award will be given to each of winners from the drawing.    $100 will be added to the pay of the twenty-five winners that are selected from the drawing.  (We are unable to give out giftcards as hoped.)  

How to Participate

How to participate:

Check if you already have a profile in MyActivities.  If you do, you might already have some aspects of the challenge already set up.   Most faculty and post-docs already have a profile.   However, not all accounts are automatically created.  If you think you should have a profile, email myactivities@uic.edu with your college and department name and we will follow-up with your college.

How to learn more to complete the challenge. Your options include:

  1. Follow the instructions provided for each Day (see side navigation)
  2. Attend workshops: The workshop will cover what you need to know to complete all five days of the challenge.   Follow along and get most of it completed during the workshop. 
  3. Drop in sessions: Do you have any challenges in completing the challenge? You can use drop in to get answers on specific issue 

General overview tutorial  This 30 minute video provides an overview of many aspects of MyActivities.    It was not created for the challenge, but if you want to learn more about how to use MyActivities, it will be a good start.    It does not cover how to add your ORCID ID so please look at Day 1 for those instructions.

Impact Challenge Overview:

  • Day 1: Obtain Orcid ID and connect it in MyActivities
  • Day 2: Fine tune name based search and add additional database IDs to profile for automatic claiming 
  • Day 3: Enter your expertise  - Expertise - Research and Professional Expertise
  • Day 4: Enter a professional activity
  • Day 5: Make your profile public

Workshops and Consults

If you want to learn more to customize your profile, share your profile with the community, or update your profile, attend a workshop on MyActivities.   

Attend a workshop and be walked through all 5 days together. This workshop will cover how to:

  • Add a custom overview of yourself and customize your profile
  • Fine tune automatic publication claiming
  • Register with and/ or add your ORCID id
  • Add other professional activities
  • Export CVs and other reports
  • Make your profile live on: https://uicollaboratory.uic.edu/ 

Workshop Dates

Workshops will be recorded if you are not able to attend live - see below for link to recording.  Additional support at: https://researchguides.uic.edu/myactivities 

Have a specific issue?   Send a message to MyActivities@uic.edu and/or ask for meeting or attend a Drop in Session

Drop in sessions:

General Overview Tutorial (Video - 30 mins)

Intro to MyActivities: This video tutorial provides a general overview of MyActivities.   The content includes how to set up your profile to automatically bring in your publications when possible, how to manually add activities, how to make your profile public, and how to make private items that you do not want seen on your public profile. Intro to MyActivities - Tutorial