Staff profile - Writing guide
If this guidance has been shared with you by a colleague please make sure that they have contacted the Digital Team at digitalsupport@derby.ac.uk to request a profile be created. You will not be able to access a profile until this has been requested via our service desk.
Please write your staff profile in the first person and keep the tone friendly but professional. Here’s a good example.
Your profile in T4 is made up of two pieces of content, your staff profile and section config. Click on the name of the content, or select edit from the actions menu to edit the content.
Staff profile
Generally, try to avoid talking about internal structures within your written content if you can. Internal structures do tend to change and aren’t always relevant/known to an outside audience. There may be instances where it is appropriate to mention internal structures particularly if your role us research-focused, but generally try to write around subjects.
For fields with written content you will see a word count aim shown. Use this recommendation sensibly - the aim of your profile is to provide an overview of you and your role, it doesn’t need to be reams and reams of information. If only some of the fields are relevant aim for the higher end of the word counts, if using all fields aim slightly lower.
Please bear in mind that this guidance has been created with our site visitors (users) in mind and it aligns with data that shows how many of these people are consuming content in short bursts, using mobile phones. It is for this reason that we dissuade from adding extensive lists of ‘recent conferences’ and ‘recent publications’ as we know that being confronted by large amounts of text does not provide the best website experience from a user perspective. Instead, we encourage pointing to sites such as Google Scholar, Research Gate, ORCID, etc for a full bibliography that users can peruse by choice.
We also advise keeping the area tidy by attaching hyperlinks rather than adding long strings of URL links (such as DOI numbers) alongside publications and any other written content. The publications/conferences list does not need to conform to the same standards as an academic bibliography. Website content should be organised with the user in mind.
Avoid linking to PDF content. Compared with HTML content, information published in a PDF is harder to find, use and maintain. More importantly, unless created with sufficient care PDFs can often be bad for accessibility and rarely comply with open standards. The default should be to create all content in HTML. If you can’t avoid publishing a PDF, ideally it should be in addition to an HTML version and the PDF must meet accessibility standards and archiving standards.
Lastly, please ensure that any dates mentioned do not include “th” “nd”, “rd” or “st” after them in order to comply with our brand guidelines.
*We may edit your content to fit the guidance in this article if it is submitted without matching these recommendations*.
Fields
Required fields are marked with a *. Other fields are optional, complete the fields which are relevant to you and your role.
Title
First name*
Surname*
Job title*
Email
Twitter - your Twitter handle eg DocWithTheSocs
LinkedIn - full url to your LinkedIn profile eg https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-turner-2a34b41a/
Website - full URL to your professional website or blog eg https://blog.derby.ac.uk/author/dr-ian-turner/
ORCiD ID - your full 16 digit id with dashes eg 0000-0002-6951-2173
About* Aim for 100-300 words
Summarise the main aspects of your role and what your focus is (teaching, research, management etc). If you are known for something else, such as keynote speaking or your media profile, you can also mention this here.
Teaching responsibilities Aim for 50-300 words
Outline the key subjects you teach. You can include course names and link to those courses if appropriate.
Professional interests Aim for 100-300 words
Talk about your general professional interests.
Research interests Aim for 100-300 words
Describe the fields/topics of research you are active in. Try to use language that most people will understand; avoid overly scientific or industry-specific terms.
Membership of professional bodies
Use a bullet point list to keep things concise and easy to skim read. You can also include any awards or accolades associated with professional bodies. For example:
Member of the Royal Society of Biology
Awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2014 – recognition of outstanding achievement in learning and teaching in higher education
Qualifications*
Present these as a simple bullet point list, starting with your earliest qualification and the University it was awarded by eg
BSc (Hons) Human Psychology – Aston University
You may or may not want to include the degree classification eg
BSc (Hons) Human Psychology (First Class Honours) – Aston University
You may want to group your qualifications under headings e.g. Professional and Academic. That’s fine but please use a bullet point list under each heading.
Recent conferences Aim for 100-300 words
Avoid presenting a long list of all your conference presentations in the last few years. Instead, summarise in a few paragraphs:
the subjects you have spoken about recently (eg the last two to three years)
where some of these presentations took place (name universities or specific events)
Experience in industry Aim for 50-300 words
Describe your past or present industry roles or consultancy work. The key aim here is to show that you have experience beyond academia.
International experience Aim for 50-300 words
If you have any experience of working internationally – either in industry roles or as a consultant or lecturer – summarise this here.
Additional interests and activities Aim for 50-300 words
If you are involved in other activities which aren’t covered in other areas of your profile but that you feel are integral to who you are and what you believe in – a campaign or cause for instance – you could briefly explain these here.
In the media Aim for 50-300 words
If you or your work has been featured in the media (Press, Radio, TV, online) briefly mention it here. You may wish to provide links to specific pieces of content. It may be easier to present this information as a bullet point list, arranged by sub-headings if necessary eg Press, Radio, TV, online.
If you appear in the media regularly, say this in an opening sentence and then choose just your most high-profile examples to feature in the list. Don’t try to include everything.
Recent publications Aim for 5-20 publications in total, or under each sub-heading
Provide a list of publications in date order, starting with the most recent. Include the title, author(s) and year as a minimum. If there are older publications which are particularly important in your career you can talk about these in more prominent sections of your profile for example under About, Research interests or Professional interests.
You can add sub-headings for different areas of research. See the publications section on Ian Turner’s profile for an example of this.
Focus on the most recent or the most important publications. You can provide a link to your ResearchGate (or similar) profile for a full list, see Briony Norton's profile for an example of this.
Section config
The section config is a content type used to tell the website what content is in your section. It is used across the website for all types of content and does include fields that you can ignore which aren’t relevant to a staff profile.
Fields
Required fields are marked with a *. Other fields are optional, complete the fields which are relevant to you and your role.
Abstract* limited to approx. 65 words/35 characters
Written in a professional tone in the third person the abstract should summarise your main roles at the University. Further examples of best practice can be found on our Digital Guidelines. The abstract is shown when you profile appears in search, for example:
Thumbnail image square - your photo - please see Staff profile - Photo guidance
College(s) - select relevant options from the available list
Research centre(s) - select relevant options from the available list
Subject(s) - select relevant options from the available list
Department(s) -select relevant options from the available list
Audience - select relevant options from the available list
Location(s) - select relevant options from the available list
Staff number*
Language(s) - select relevant options from the available list
Job type - select relevant options from the available list