As a PhD student, highlighting own work can benefit in several ways . To build carrier high visibility of research success both in online and offline will bring obvious benefits . Publication in scholarly journal are now considered as only one way to showcase research. Integration of social networking, blogging, twitter.....etc with scholarly publication are helpful . Some commercial site have also been developed for this purpose. News agencies and science magazine are only consider if work is groundbreaking, which is most of the time far from your destiny. PhD students should build own research visibility by his/her own effort. So, what is your own way to showcase your research ?

Well, one can start to write blogs for a start... however the format of writing should be very very simple so that even normal people can understand what he/she is writing
And of course, the articles have to be made interesting as well, which is no easy task

Via patenting your idea, provided it is patentable.

Your invention must NOT be publicly known more than One Year prior to your filing date
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(1) However, any printed publication, written by anyone, and from anywhere in the world, in any language, is considered valid prior art if it was published either before your earliest provable date of invention, or over one year before you file your patent application.

(2) The term “printed publication” thus includes patents, books, magazines (including trade and professional journals), Russian Inventor’s Certificates, and publicly available technical papers and abstracts. Even photocopied theses, provided they were made publicly available by putting them in a college library, will constitute prior art. While the statute speaks of “printed” publications, I’m sure that information on computer information utilities or networks would be considered a printed publication, provided it was publicly available.

(3) Therefore, if you fail to file within one year of such sale, offer for sale, public or commercial disclosure or use, the law bars you from obtaining a valid patent on the invention, even if you conceived and built and tested it before the sale or publication.

(4) Put another way, your own invention would now be prior art against any patent application you file.

It used to be that ideas are not patentable, and that was good. Nowadays, many ideas are patentable, and it is not good. IMO, we can blame the USPTO for leading everyone down this path.

Anyways, TS is talking about getting more publicity, "collecting" citations. Getting more people to hear of his ideas, to build on top of it, and to advance civilization.

You're talking about the opposite. Locking things up for personal profit. So that nobody could use them without paying you. Even if they come to the same idea independently, they could not use it, because you were there first. Used in the way you propose here, patents will inhibit the development of schience and technology.

Another way to “market” your research is to publicly perform creative experimental testing on your invention, product, or subject, if applicable. This will make your research not only visible but likeable as well. You are creating what people love before they know they want it!

(1) For example, software in the beta phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, as well as speed/performance issues and may still cause crashes or data loss. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing. The process of delivering StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm beta version to the users is called beta release and this is typically the first time that the game is available outside of Blizzard Entertainment that developed it.



(2) For another example of a public use, suppose that you invented a new type of paint and you use it to paint your building in downtown Kuala Lumpur. If the prior public use was for bona fide (good faith) experimental purposes, it doesn’t count as prior art. Thus suppose that you painted your building to test the durability of your new paint: each month you photographed it, kept records on its reflectivity, wear resistance, and adhesion. In this case your one-year period wouldn’t be initiated (begin to run) until your bona fide experimentation stopped and you left the paint out for non-experimental purposes.