Abstract
Online research tools allow researchers to embrace online research communities and
establish an online presence. An online presence implies e-visibility which embodies
online visibility, discoverability and accessibility. In December 2014 an e-visibility
survey was conducted on environmental science researchers at Unisa to determine
their perceived e-visibility. The results indicate that the majority of researchers are
emerging researchers with an average age of 40; with a master’s degree and they are
employed at lecturer level. The majority of participants have online research e-profiles
and they prefer e-profiling, using online research social networking tools. In addition,
the majority prefer free resources (Google Scholar) to fee-based citation resources
(Scopus and Web of Science) in order to ascertain their online research presence and
traditional research impact. The low percentage of profiling, using traditional fee-based
citation resources translates into low online visibility. A low percentage of researchers
participated in self-archiving their research output to repositories is reported; this has
an impact on online research discoverability and accessibility and suggests low
discoverability and accessibility of online research. The development of an e-visibility
strategy would allow the enhancement of e-visibility by increasing online research
visibility, discoverability and accessibility.