Contact and partnerships

You've found a researcher whose work you think has a lot of relevance to you -- maybe they've been studying your community -- and you have questions! Or perhaps you are hoping to create a connection or partnership.

What's likely to work

• Contacts via social media used to disseminate the work, relatively soon after a post: if I blog about a paper and you comment on my blog post, I'm very likely to see it.
• Email to the 'corresponding author' -- researchers often put their real email addresses and other contact information right on their paper and are generally delighted to hear from someone who has read their work. But don't be offended if you don't hear back; it's unlikely to be personal. There's always the risk of being caught by spam filters or buried under various deadlines. Often even quite high-ranking academics read all their own mail, and yours might be mixed with all kinds of other matters. During quarters when on leave or under a particularly heavy load, mail might get neglected for weeks or months.
• Responses to the researcher reaching out (perhaps a naive mailing list post or forum comment). We try to follow the rules of the communities we contact, but we don't always get it right. If we're trying our best, and you're trying your best, we're all more likely to connect in a productive way.

What might or might not work

• Pings on socials where the author has a presence but doesn't post regularly. Like many other folks, we might only have an account because we wanted to see or try something.

What's unlikely to work

• Physical mail. Academics are often nomadic or else their mail is routed via a Byzantine campus system that might never reach them. But it might be fun to try.

Tips for an effective e-mail

Like all busy people, researchers often triage their email -- so think about how your message might be triaged and whether that matches with what you really want.

What works

• Specific asks and offers (especially those that involve yes/no answers) ("Would you be interested in speaking to my LUG about QRST?" "I'm looking for a supervisor for an internship to explore topic A and your website suggests you have expertise in this topic, can we set up a call to discuss?")
• Grounded comments and questions ("I read your article X on topic Y and was wondering about A, B, and C.")

What's unlikely to work

• General/vague inquiries ("What do you think about AI in the future of sports?")
• Anything uncivil or weird -- academics are just like everyone else that way! We get our share of online harassment, scams, and spam, so it's best to avoid sounding like one of the baddies if you're not.