Questions, answered.

1. 1
   Create an account.
2. 2
   In My Papers, add your Google Scholar profile and the papers you want in your campaign. If you add none, the campaign covers all your papers.
3. 3
   Choose a plan in My Plans. Within 1–2 days our team analyses your papers and sets a strategy, then your campaign starts.
4. 4
   The campaign runs automatically on the platforms. Scholar emails can be sent by you, or automatically by the system if you prefer.

Anyone with published research they want more people to read.

Researchers, academics and students use PaperSpotlight for their own papers. Journals and publishers work with us too.

Five plans: Basic, Basic++, Std, Std++ and Pro.

Each step up gives your papers more exposure and adds services. You can subscribe monthly or buy one month or one year at once. The pricing table on the Authors page shows what each plan includes.

• Sign in, open My Plans and click Buy a Plan.
• Or choose a plan in the pricing table on the Authors page.

We don't offer a free trial at the moment.

Most of what you pay goes directly to our partners and the academic platforms that show your papers, so every campaign has a real cost from day one.

A one-month plan is an easy way to start, and many clients find it well worth it. You also have a full refund within 3 days of purchase.

No. You can add any paper you authored, whether you are the first author, a co-author or the last author.

In our experience, 5–10 papers work best. See which papers to choose.

Yes.

In fast-moving fields such as computer science and AI, much important work is only on arXiv, and you can add it like any other paper.

Many preprints outside top conferences are later published in a journal. When that happens, merge the preprint into the journal version of the paper, so their citations count together.

Peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers, preprints and other academic publications, in every discipline.

There is no limit, but 5–10 papers work best.

Your plan's exposure is shared between its papers, so a long list spreads it thinner at first. Over time the campaign shifts towards the papers readers respond to most. See which papers to choose.

No. The price is set by the exposure you buy, not by the number of papers.

• Adding more papers shares that exposure between them.
• More papers also give our algorithm more room: it combines them and bids in real time based on readers' clicks, to get the most from your budget.

Yes, at any time.

1. 1
   Add the paper in My Papers.
2. 2
   Include it in a plan under My Plans → Paper Allocation.

You decide, in My Plans → Paper Allocation.

1. 1
   Tick the papers the plan should cover.
2. 2
   Choose Auto to share the plan evenly, or Manual to set each paper's share with the slider.
3. 3
   Click Save.

Yes, at any time.

Delete or edit a paper in My Papers. Once a paper is deleted, it leaves your campaign.

Keywords to Target decide which researchers see the paper; Keywords to Avoid keep it away from unrelated topics.

1. 1
   In My Papers, click Edit next to the paper.
2. 2
   Change Keywords to Target or Keywords to Avoid.
3. 3
   Click OK.

They set how your plan is shared between the services.

• You have 8 tokens, spread evenly at the start.
• Move tokens from one service to another in My Plans → Service Priority, at any time.

Our interactive guide suggests a split based on your situation and our past work. The best split depends on your results and your preferences.

No.

Our campaigns can only sponsor posts published by our campaign accounts, not posts from other accounts. Your paper itself appears on LinkedIn through those accounts.

It's up to you.

No.

Each email is a personal introduction sent to a small number of highly relevant researchers, not a mass mailing, and anyone we contacted recently is skipped.

We recommend it.

Before a paper goes into your campaign, check with your co-authors that they are comfortable with it. In My Papers, “Tips Before You Share” has a short message you can copy and send them.

By the change in your citation rate.

Our citations are natural: more of the right researchers read your paper, and some of them cite it. So the clearest sign is in the totals, where our growth adds to your natural citation rate.

• Compare how fast your citations grow now with how fast they grew before.
• The system also records your citation curve during the campaign. Compared with papers in the same field that had no campaign, the difference is usually clear.

Allow for the delay: over 45% of new citations arrive 6–10 months after researchers first see your paper.

In your Dashboard:

• Impressions on each channel
• The researchers reached
• The emails sent
• Your citation trend

You also get a weekly report.

No.

Tying the price to a number of citations would be buying and selling citations, which we never do. What we sell is exposure: we bring your paper to the right researchers, and they decide whether to cite it.

No one can honestly promise that.

What we do is raise the chance that your paper is noticed by the right audience and cited. Whether to cite it is always the reader's decision.

Yes, they are real, and about 75% come from Web of Science journals.

Each week your papers are shown to many researchers, through active researcher accounts on the platforms, and the more researchers see a paper, the more it is cited. In the emails, you can see exactly which researchers were contacted.

Every citation can be traced, and none of this raises research-ethics issues.

No.

Misconduct starts where money is tied to a number of citations. That is citation trading, and we never do it.

Think of an election: buying votes is a crime, but campaigning to win voters is completely legal.

We work like the campaign. We bring your paper to a wider relevant audience on professional platforms such as ResearchGate and LinkedIn and through traditional scholar emails, and researchers who find it useful cite it naturally.

Several of our colleagues have handled research-ethics cases as research integrity officers at publishers and universities, so we know exactly where the line lies.

Four rules, applied to every campaign:

• Only relevant researchers see your paper.
• Every placement is labelled.
• We never buy or sell citations.
• Anyone contacted recently is skipped.

Yes to both.

You can subscribe to more than one plan at the same time. To change plans, cancel the current subscription and subscribe to the new plan.

You get a full refund within 3 days of purchase.

We also refund you if:

• Our editor finds that our service does not suit your situation.
• Our database lacks enough relevant researchers or topics for your papers.
• We cannot reach the number of relevant researchers we committed to.

See our Refund Policy for details.

No, but every purchase comes with a full refund within 3 days.

See our Refund Policy for details.

Yes.

Everything you submit about your papers is stored securely and used only for providing our services.

Email [email protected], or use the contact form on our About page.