Content guidelines
Any updates made to your profile will be visible within five to ten minutes of clicking save. Data imported from other systems, including grants and supervisions, will be updated on a weekly basis.
There is no approval process required. All information updated will be visible in your public profile once you save.
Your profile is public facing so you should keep your profile in line with Deakin professional standards and avoid:
- uploading any information about grants that have not been contractually finalised
- including personal websites or other details you don’t want publicly available
- including information that would negatively impact the reputation of Deakin or any University staff
- disclosing confidential information
- disclosing personal private information about yourself or others
- disclosing commercially sensitive information or third-party IP without the express consent of contracting parties.
Alert
All representations made by you on your profile must comply with the standards and obligations laid out in Deakin’s Code of Conduct (or Student Code of Conduct for graduate researchers).
Example profiles
Feel free to take inspiration from some of these exemplar profiles demonstrating these guidelines:
- Peter Enticott
- Lara Voglsanger (Graduate researcher)
- Catherine Bennett
- Jayson Lamchek
Deakin University Editorial Style Guide
The Deakin University Editorial Style Guide aims to achieve consistency of editorial style across Deakin University’s written publications and communications such as websites, marketing material, newsletters, memos, reports and course materials.
These key principles can be applied to the Find an Expert tool:
Tone of voice
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Use first person for an engaging staff profile or third person for an authoritative staff profile. Be consistent.
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Use an active voice rather than a passive voice.
Punctuation
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Avoid abbreviations or shortened forms where possible.
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In general, use minimal commas for a list within a sentence.
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In most instances, serial commas (a comma that comes before the final 'and' or 'or' in a list of three or more items, also known as an Oxford comma) shouldn't be used. Only use serial commas in a list sentence that is complex or to avoid confusion (e.g. ‘The choices were yellow, blue, black and white, or red.’).
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Use single quotation marks – only use double quotation marks when there is a quotation within a quotation.
Formatting
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Single spacing is used and single line used between paragraphs.
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Use ‘and’ instead of an ampersand.
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Capitalisation signifies specific or proper names and titles, as opposed to general or common terms. In general, use capitals for titles of books and journals, days of the week, months of the year, names of places, nationalities, proprietary names, trademarks and forms of address. Otherwise, use ‘Sentence case’.
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Avoid acronyms – if necessary, introduce the full term at the first reference, followed by the shortened, capitalised form in brackets.
Academic titles
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Capitalise the full and specific titles of academics when they appear in a byline or in narrative text (Janet Brown is the Executive Director of Deakin Research Innovations).
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Don’t capitalise the title of an academic when used generically in a sentence (Brian White is a senior lecturer in sociology at Deakin).
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In most communications use the academic or professional title of a person and their full name at first reference, then use their academic or professional title and last name thereafter (e.g. Professor Jane Smith is head of the committee).
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Where space is an issue, use the abbreviated form of an academic or professional title but ideally the title should be spelt out in full (except for Dr which is always used in its shortened form).
Numbers
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For general text, express numbers from one to nine in words not numerals. Express numbers from 10 onward as figures, except where the number is being used in conversational text (e.g. There are likely to be a few hundred complaints).
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No space or comma is needed in numbers up to three digits. Use a comma for numbers larger than three digits.
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You can use an unspaced en dash for spans of figures and in expressions relating to time or distance (e.g. pages 86–7).
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Use minimal capitalisation in headings and subheadings. Don’t use a full stop at the end of a heading, use lower case after a colon between a heading and subheading.
