Research Promotion Tools Compared: What Each Kind Really Does
Research promotion tools fall into five kinds: profiles, places to host the paper, explainers, media makers and trackers. This comparison names verified examples of each, what they cost at the time of writing, and the gap each one leaves.
You search for research promotion tools and get a long list: profiles, preprint servers, summary pages, video studios, AI audio, attention trackers. Each one claims to help your paper get noticed. Most of them do, but each does one job, and none of them does all of the jobs.
So instead of another top ten, this comparison sorts the tools by the job they do, names verified examples, and says plainly what each kind does not do. Prices and terms come from each provider's own pages at the time of writing (October 2026). If you have used Kudos and want a deeper look at it, see our separate guide to Kudos alternatives for researchers.
The Five Jobs a Promotion Tool Can Do
A paper reaches people in roughly this order: someone finds your name, finds a copy of the paper, understands what it says, meets it in a format they actually consume, and you learn that it happened. Each of those steps has its own kind of tool:
- Profiles: connect your name to your papers, reliably.
- Hosting: put a findable, citable copy of the work somewhere stable.
- Explainers: say what the paper found in plain language.
- Media makers: turn the paper into video or audio.
- Trackers: show where the paper is being read, cited or discussed.
The mistake is expecting a tool from one row to do the job of another. A Google Scholar profile will not explain your paper to a journalist, and a beautiful video will not tell you who cited it.
Profiles: ORCID and Google Scholar
ORCID provides a unique, persistent identifier that is free of charge to researchers, plus a record connected to it, and says researchers will be able to create, edit and maintain that identifier and record free of charge. Its job is attribution: making sure your papers stay linked to you across institutions, name changes and years.
A Google Scholar profile lists your publications, shows who is citing them, graphs citations over time and computes metrics. Google calls it "quick and free" to set up, recommends a personal Google account rather than an institutional one so you can keep the profile as long as you wish, and says that entering your university email address and making the profile public make it eligible to appear in Scholar results when people search for your name.
Scholar is also a modest tracker. You can follow your own profile and get an email when newly published articles cite your work. It computes two versions, All and Recent, of three metrics: the h-index, the i10-index and the total number of citations, and Google says it probably will not add others.
What profiles do not do: explain anything. They tell people the paper exists and who wrote it, not why it matters.
Hosting: Your Own Site, Repositories and Preprint Servers
The simplest hosting tool is your own website. Google Scholar's inclusion guidelines say that for an individual author it "works best to simply upload your paper to your website" and link it from your publications page, with the full text in a PDF ending in ".pdf", the title in large font at the top, the authors on a separate line below it, and a bibliography section at the end. Scholar says its robots should then normally include the paper within several weeks. Check your publisher's sharing policy before you post a version.
Zenodo, launched by CERN in May 2013, takes data, software and other research outputs from every discipline. By default it registers a DOI for every upload when it is published, and if your work already has a DOI from a journal, you must give that DOI instead so the same content does not get two. Its policies set a total file size limit of 50GB per record.
OSF Preprints is a network of community-run preprint servers, including PsyArXiv and SocArXiv, for working papers, preprints and published papers. Submissions follow pre-moderation: they stay private and pending until a moderator accepts or rejects them, and accepted preprints get a DOI and a persistent URL.
What hosting does not do: bring readers. A DOI makes the work citable and findable by people who are already looking for it. It does not make anyone look.
Explainers: Kudos and The Conversation
Kudos gives each publication you claim a basic page where you can add a plain language summary and choose a featured image from its stock selection. Basic metrics show the page's views in Kudos and the paper's Altmetric and citation counts. Premium for one person costs £79 a year or £9.99 a month at the time of writing (October 2026), and adds a full personal Showcase plus metrics on how often the paper was shared, how many people clicked those links, and through which channels.
The Conversation publishes articles explaining new research for a non-expert audience. Writers must be scholars or researchers affiliated with a college, university or research institution, and PhD students can write about their research topic or share a byline with a faculty advisor. It does not publish opinion or advocacy pieces, publishes only original material not written by generative AI, and says it can accept only a small fraction of the pitches it receives.
The pitch page linked above is for the US edition, which generally works with academics at US universities; editions in Africa, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Indonesia, New Zealand, Spain and the UK take their own pitches.
What explainers do not do: change the format. A summary page or an article is still text, read by people who were willing to click through to text.
Media Makers: Commissioned Video and AI Audio
At the time of writing (October 2026), Springer Nature lists its Video Byte at $350.00: a 1-minute video with visuals, footage and music, scripted for a lay audience. It is delivered within 10 business days with one revision, hosted on YouTube and Vimeo, and may be featured on Springer Nature's social media channels.
Google's Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) offers a free tier when you sign up with a Gmail account. Its Audio Overviews summarize the sources you upload, in formats including The Brief, where a single speaker delivers the key takeaways in under two minutes, and in 80+ languages. Google warns that they "may contain inaccuracies or audio glitches", and sharing by link means giving listeners access to the full notebook. For a closer look, see our guide to using an Audio Overview for your own paper.
What media makers do not do: give the result a home. A video on a publisher's YouTube channel or an audio file in your downloads folder still needs a page where your readers will find it next to the paper.
Trackers: Altmetric and PlumX
Altmetric's free tools include a bookmarklet for Chrome, Firefox and Safari that shows the online shares and mentions of an article in one click, and badges that individual researchers can embed for free on a personal website or online CV. Altmetric can only link attention to an output it can identify: its metadata guidance asks for at least two supported meta tags, one of them a unique identifier such as a DOI, PubMed ID or arXiv ID, on the page where the output lives (a journal article with a Crossref-registered DOI needs only the DOI tag).
Elsevier's PlumX Metrics sort activity into five categories: Citations, Usage, Captures, Mentions and Social Media. That split is useful even if you never open PlumX, because it reminds you that a download, a bookmark and a news story are different kinds of attention.
What trackers do not do: create attention. They count what happened. If nobody has seen the paper yet, the badge shows zero.
Side by Side
| Job | Verified examples | What it does | What it does not do | Cost at the time of writing (October 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profile | ORCID, Google Scholar profile | Links your name to your papers; Scholar adds citation counts and alerts | Explain the paper | Free |
| Hosting | Your site, Zenodo, OSF Preprints | Findable, citable copy; DOIs from Zenodo and accepted OSF preprints | Bring readers | Your site depends on your host; check each service's current terms |
| Explainer | Kudos, The Conversation | Plain-language text about the paper | Change the format | Kudos free or £79 a year Premium; The Conversation by pitch |
| Media maker | Springer Nature Video Byte, Gemini Notebook | A short video or AI audio | Give the result a home beside the paper | $350.00 per Video Byte; Gemini Notebook has a free tier |
| Tracker | Altmetric free tools, Google Scholar alerts, PlumX | Counts mentions, shares and citations | Create attention | Altmetric bookmarklet and individual badges are free |
A Worked Example: Building a Stack for One Paper
Say you are a postdoc with a psychology paper just out in a subscription journal, and you have about three hours this month for promotion. A sensible stack looks like this:
- Profiles (30 minutes): add the paper to your ORCID record and check it appears on your public Google Scholar profile, then follow your own profile for citation alerts.
- Hosting (30 minutes): check the journal's sharing policy, then post the version you are allowed to share on PsyArXiv or your own site, linking the DOI of the published version.
- Explainer (1 hour): write a plain-language summary for your lab page, using our guide to writing a plain language summary.
- Tracking (15 minutes): add the free Altmetric badge next to the paper on your site.
- Format (the rest): decide whether this paper needs a video or audio version, and where on your own page it would live.
That stack costs nothing but time, and every tool in it does a different job. The gap it leaves is the media row: the paper is findable and explained, but still only as text.
Where Amplify Fits
Amplify sits in the media-maker row, and it was built to close the gap that row usually leaves. One order covers one paper and all four formats at one price, with no subscription: a video abstract (16:9, about 3 minutes), a vertical short (9:16, 45 to 60 seconds), an audio brief in English plus 21 more languages on request, and a one-page, print-ready infographic.
Everything is generated from the PDF you upload and nothing else, and every artifact carries the title, the authors and a link back to the paper of record. Each format arrives as three variants you can edit line by line or regenerate. A person reviews every format before it is released, and nothing publishes until you approve it.
The formats get a home through an embeddable widget: one script tag per page, one marker per paper, on your faculty profile, lab site or publication list. Readers can read, listen and ask questions about the paper without leaving your page. The analytics show reads, listens, questions asked, languages and which format moved people, and the widget and analytics are included in the per-paper price.
Amplify does not replace your ORCID record, your Scholar profile, a repository DOI or an Altmetric badge, and it is not meant to. You keep ownership of your work, we do not train on it, and you can delete a paper and its artifacts at any time. If you plan to send the video to a journal, check the journal's specs and AI policy first, and ask the editor if unsure.
Choosing Without Overbuying
Most of the tools above have a free option, so the real cost is your attention. Pick the row your paper is weakest in, use one tool for it, and leave the rest until the next paper. Profiles and hosting are worth doing for every paper; explainers, media and tracking are worth doing for the papers you most want read.
Quick answers
What are the main types of research promotion tools?
There are five kinds, each doing a different job. Profiles such as ORCID and Google Scholar connect your name to your papers. Repositories and preprint servers such as Zenodo and OSF Preprints host a findable copy. Explainers such as Kudos describe the paper in plain language. Media makers turn it into video or audio. Trackers such as Altmetric show where it is discussed.
Are there free tools to promote my research paper?
Yes, several. ORCID gives researchers an identifier and record free of charge, and setting up a Google Scholar profile is free. Kudos has a free plan with a plain language summary page for each publication you claim. Altmetric offers a free bookmarklet and free badges that individual researchers can embed on a personal website or online CV.
Can Google Scholar alert me when someone cites my paper?
Yes. On your Google Scholar profile you can follow yourself and tick "New citations to my articles", and Scholar emails you when newly published articles cite works in your profile. Scholar computes three metrics, the h-index, the i10-index and total citations, in All and Recent versions, and says it probably will not add others.
Which research promotion tool should I start with?
Start with profiles and hosting, which are worth doing for every paper. Add the paper to your ORCID record and a public Google Scholar profile, and put a findable copy on your own site or a repository. Then pick the job your paper is weakest in, such as a plain-language explanation, a video or audio version, or tracking, and use one tool for it.
