Once your Research AMP site is configured, you’re ready to begin creating and curating content. When managing content on Research AMP, you’ll have access to all the content-editing tools of WordPress. See here for more information on WordPress’s editorial toolkit.
In addition to the default WordPress tools, some Research AMP item types have type-specific affordances and requirements.
Research Topics
Research Topics are the most central way to organize content on a Research AMP site.
Create and manage Research Topics at Dashboard > Research Topics.
Most Research AMP content types (Articles, Citations, etc) can be associated with one or more Research Topics. For example, when editing an Article, find the Research Topics section in the Article sidebar. Each piece of content can be assigned to one or more research topics in the right toolbar. This is also where you would add tags, assign the review to a scholar profile, and add any featured images.
The full-length description for research topics, which appears at the top of research topic landing pages, is stored in the main content area of the Dashboard edit page. The “short” description, used in research topic teasers on the homepage and elsewhere on the site, is stored in the post excerpt.
Profiles
A profile needs to be set up for an author before an article or research review can be assigned to them. The standard template for profiles includes name, title and institution, photograph, biography, and contact information such as email addresses and Twitter handles. This information will only appear on the finished page if information is added in these sections.
The citations, article, and research reviews associated with the profile will appear on the scholar’s profile page.
Homepage Slides
At the top of the Research AMP home page are a series of sliders that can allow you to highlight research topics or individual articles. The sliders can either be automatic, in which one slide moves to another at a set interval, or site users can manually click through the slides.
The homepage slides can be created and customized by clicking the “homepage slides” link in the left navigation bar (outlined in red in the image below)
Citations
Zotero is the repository of truth for all citation data. As such, all changes to data need to be made on the Zotero side, and changes would appear on the Research AMP site.
The citation pages populate from the Zotero Library. You’ll note that not all the possible information on the citation page: we decided that title, abstract, author, publication, and year were sufficient. We elected not to reproduce the information architecture, searching and filtering already available on the Zotero web client, opting to steer visitors there rather than reinvent the wheel.
If the author of a citation has a scholar profile, be sure to make the association on the right-hand column of the dashboard edit page. This information is used to populate the “recent citations” section of scholar profiles. It also powers the association of scholars with research topics: if a given citation is linked to one topic, then its associated scholars will appear when filtering by that topic in the search function.
Zotero libraries for Research AMP sites are publicly accessible, linked to your individual site, and edited only by group members. Building your Zotero library is critical to the function of a Research AMP site and to help build your site audience. See below for general guidelines on how to set-up a Zotero for your Research AMP and suggestions on citation practices.
Organizing your Zotero Library
We recommend two Zotero groups within your Research AMP library. One group will be private, members-only, and serve as the backend staging ground for editing citations before they go live. This allows for thoughtful curation and editing before citations are publicly available.
The second group will be public access and member-only editing. This will be where your RAMP citations’ live and what is linked to your Research AMP website’s “citation library.” Before citations are added to this group, they should be edited to reflect your citation style and linked properly to the URL where the work exists in an online journal, database, or so forth.
Within your public access Zotero group, we recommend setting sub-folders around each Research Topic you have. For example, see MediaWell’s citation library here. Note that the citation library seen in this link is filtered by Research Topic, meaning that citations can be searched for by Research Topic. These sub-folders are critical to how the site is designed to organize information for your audience across the platform. As such, citations should be organized into their appropriate sub-folder and not live “loosely” in the broader Zotero group.
The appropriate settings for your Zotero groups should be as follows:
- Private Group
- Group Type: Private
- Group Library: Only members can view and edit
- Public Group
- Group Type: Public, Closed Membership
- Group Library: Anyone can view, only members can edit
Please note that within your initial Research AMP download, Zotero will be automatically linked to your RAMP website by SSRC’s development team.
Styling Citations in Zotero
We try to be as comprehensive as possible with our citations while maintaining clarity for the average website user. As such, we recommend setting specific style guides for citations among your Research AMP team. We find that the best citation practices for us are generally as follows:
- Properly edited works should have:
- Item Type,
- Title,
- Authors,
- Volume & Issue if appropriate,
- Date: YEAR/MONTH/DAY format (or just year if NA),
- Full Abstract,
- Publication, and
- URL.
- We also recommend removing any tags that auto-populate with the citation as they cannot be sorted in the Research AMP website and can lead to discrepancy issues for a user.
- Once a citation is moved out of the private staging group into the public one, delete this citation from the staging zone for organizational best practices.
We do not recommend using pdfs as your main citation as Zotero cannot auto-populate any information. If you’d like to nominate an article or report in pdf form, make sure you are on the article webpage, not the online pdf view.
Research Reviews and Articles
The teaser that appears on the Research Topic landing pages is powered by the Excerpt. Be sure to fill in the excerpt field, or an excerpt will be generated automatically.
Each research review or article needs a “Formatted Citation” to power the “Cite This” tool. Enter it in the “Formatted Citation” metabox on the Dashboard edit screen. Be sure to click ‘Update’ to save changes.
Each research review or article needs a DOI to generate an AltMetrics badge. Enter it in the “DOI” metabox on the Dashboard edit screen. Be sure to click ‘Update’ to save changes. Note that the use of AltMetrics is optional, and requires a subscription to AltMetric. DOIs also require registration via ResearchGate.
Featured images are used to generate images on the home page, associated with the article or research review. Use the ‘Featured Image’ metabox near the bottom of the right-hand column on the Dashboard edit page. The image should be at least 1200px wide, high-contrast B&W.
When entering the review or article text into the WordPress editor, you will need to ensure that all formatting is correct in your text editing software before proceeding. Format the body text and all sub headings correctly, and add a works cited section.