Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Use of social media by
scholarly authors
Melinda KennewayFounder and Director, TBI Communications: www.tbicommunications.com
Executive Director, Kudos: www.growkudos.com
Topics
1. Introduction
2. What is social media?
3. Why and how is social media used by researchers?
4. How effective is social media?
5. Looking ahead
introduction
At every stage in the research cycle –
planning, researching, preserving,publishing, and distributing – social
media is being used by researchers
and scholars to communicate,
collaborate, promote their research,
and debate.
Columbia University Libraries
New research processes
Social media is also on the rise as an
evaluation tool through which a
scholar’s reputation and the relevance
and impact of their work can be
measured – together with that of their
institution, funder and publisher.
New performance measures
The benefits of using social media in a
research context have been cited,
among myriad others, as including
democratization, wideningparticipation, and engaging new
audiences on a global level.
New era of engagement
Research 3.0
Emergence of social
media is driving a
revolution in:
• collaboration
• processes
• dissemination
• discovery
• reputation
“Everything is changing. The
scientific publishing industry is
changing. Very traditional
publications are embracing
social media, and evidence is
piling up that this method of
communicating should soon
seem traditional to scientists.”
Dominique BrossardProfessor of Life Sciences
Communication
University of Wisconsin-
Madison
what is social media?
social media: a definition
Websites and applications that enable
users to create and share content or to
participate in social networking.
Kaplan Andreas M., Haenlein Michael (2010). "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social
media". Business Horizons 53 (1). p. 61. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003.
why and how is social media
used by researchers?
3,500
responses,
95 countries
Why do researchers use social media?
MOST COMMON
Follow discussions
Post work/content
Discover peers
Discover content
LEAST COMMON
Curiosity
Tracking metrics
Discovering jobs
Discussing research
2 trends driving the ‘why’ …
1. discoverable or die
In the world today
there are
50 million published
research articles
More and more articles
Growth curve for number of articles published per annumChart based on 3.26% pa growth in article numbers,the lower limit proposed by Mabe and Amin in
Growth dynamics of scholarly and scientific journals. Scientometrics, 51:1 (2001) 147–162
Articles under-utilized
Usa
ge
or
cita
tio
ns
Article Usage / Citation Distribution
Usage / citations
Most read/cited article
Least read/
cited article
51%
33%
6%
10%
Could be somewhat improved Could be significantly improved Could not be improved
I don’t know
How do researchers feel about current levels of
visibility, usage and impact?
n = 3,669
84% of authors think there is room for improvement So should be open to
using tools that help drive visibility, usage, impact
To what extent do you think more could be done to increase the visibility,
usage or impact of your articles on or after publication?
Do they get much support from their institutions?
No – there are no staff specifically responsible for this at my institution
I don't know
Yes – press office
Yes – other dedicated staff at a central level
Yes – staff at a central level, but not exclusively dedicated to this
Yes – dedicated staff at a faculty level
Yes – staff at a faculty level, but not exclusively dedicated to this
Does your institution have staff specifically responsible for helping
researchers increase and/or demonstrate the impact of their research?
NOYES
n = 3,630
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Me Publisher / society
My co-authors
Institution's PR team
Research support
staff
Library / repository
staff
Funder
1 (least responsibility)
2
3
4
5
6
7 (most responsibility)
Who should have responsibility for increasing
levels of visibility, usage and impact?
They’re pretty willing to do it themselves!
Note that publisher is rated above co-authors, and both above institution’s press / research support teams …
n = 3,410
Please rate the following for how much responsibility you think they should have
for ensuring your articles are as widely read and cited as possible:
Comments from researchers
I would pay for such aservice. … Good work; it isneeded.
Professor of Physical Sciences, USA
When the investment of time per paper isapproximately 3-6 months almost any reasonableduration is acceptable to increase the usage andcitations. If I could spend a mere 25 hours, particularlyafter the paper is accepted or soon after publication todramatically increase the probability of citations Iwould!
Research Fellow, Physical Sciences, UK
Lecturer in Social Sciences, UK
I know I should do this but I don’t feel confident enough with [current] tools
26%
22%
15%
13%
11%
9%
2% 2%
Talking to colleagues
Offprints
Professional networking sites
Discussion lists
Social networking sites
Multimedia sharing sites
Wikipedia
How do researchers currently share their articles?
Only 13% currently using social / multimedia Good potential for
improvement if we can encourage usage of these channels
n = 3,022
In which of the following ways do you currently create awareness of
or share materials relating to your article?
How do academics currently find articles?
29
Search engines
14%
A&Is
12%
Email / RSS ToCs
11%
Conversations
with colleagues
11% Conferences
11%
Emails / links from
colleagues
8%
Critical reviews
8%
Library services
6%
Discussion lists
5% Mobile
apps
5%
Professional
networking sites
4%
Social
networking sites
2%
Wikipedia
2%
Multimedia
sharing sites
1%
n = 3,345
Potential value of social may be focussed on filtering rather than discovery in short term• Only 3% using social or
multimedia for discovery• But: 14% use search to
find articles (the most popular method)
Which of the following do you currently use to find out about articles that may be relevant to your work?
2. reputation matters
Researchers are under increased pressure to
demonstrate impact• Increased efforts from funders to assess research impact (social,
economic, scientific …)
• Institutions developing new tools to assess the quality of their
research output (e.g. Becker model)
• Article-level metrics reveal impact of individual articles – shift
away from journal impact factor (e.g. Dora)
• Altmetrics showcase broader usage of research articles
Publication performance
Institutional performance
Researcher performance
Publication performance
• Rise of article level metrics
- PLOS, Wiley …
• Introduction of altmetrics
- ImpactStory, Altmetric …
• New units of publishing: data/images
- Figshare, Dryad ...
• Pre-publication scoring
- Rubriq, Peerage of Science
• Tools for institutional assessment
- Plum analytics, Becker model
Researcher performance
• Publication output
• Publication impact
• Funding
• Other income (e.g. patents)
• Affiliations (institutional reputation)
• Social (influence) scoring systems
- Klout, RG score, Peer Index …
• ‘Esteem factors’
- Membership of societies/ed boards etc
- Conference activity
- Awards and prizes
Institutional performance
UK Research Excellence Framework
• Outputs 65%:
- “originality, significance and rigor”
• Impact sub-profile 20%:
- “unit’s reach and significance”
• Environment sub-profile 15%:
- “research environment vitality and sustainability”
Other models and tools
• University rankings
• Snowball metrics
• Becker model
Research assessmentSector UK US Germany China Japan
Government RCUK
assessment
- pathways
to impact
STAR Metrics ESF
Guidelines
NNSFC –
expert
review
panels
CSTP
(focus on
peer
review)
Higher
Education
Research
Excellence
Framework
– 20% now
based on
‘impact’
(case
studies +
pilot
Impactfinder
Peer review,
citation analysis –
no formal
framework
Research
Rating
(introduced
early 2013)
Publication
metrics
(e.g.
impact
factor)
NIAD-UE
(evolving
assessment
framework
– no
assessment
prior to
2008)
Private Non-
Profit
Funder-
specific
Funder-specific
(focused on peer
review)
Funder-
specific
(informed
peer
review)
“No routine
evaluation
conducted”
Research
Center for
Science
Systems
(peer
review)
how effective is
social media?
Kudos embeds codes into templated
communications so authors can track
which outreach activities are effective in
increasing access to their work
(Within 24 hours of the tweet)
Kudos in the hands of a super user…
http://www.chemconnector.com/2014/06/20/give-me-kudos-for-my-articles/
Within two weeks of registration ….
12 shares
45 share
referrals1240 Kudos views 431 downloads
138 claims
Kudos pilot results
19% higherarticle usage per day
for articles shared using the Kudos tools
compared to the control group
Blogging and tweating
Terras, M. The Impact of Social Media on the Dissemination of Research:
Results of an Experiment. Journal of Digital Humanities 1:3, September 2012
Prof Melissa TerrasReader in Electronic Communication, Department of Information Studies, UCL, Director of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities
I tweeted and blogged about my articles:
• Take 1 research project
• Add 4 resulting publications
• Share 3 of them on social media and ignore the other one
• Downloads: 297, 290, 142 12
Blogging and tweating
The mean rate of HTML views in the week after the
social media release was 18 per day, whereas the
rate during the other three weeks was no more than
6 per day. The mean rate of PDF downloads in the
week after the social media release was 4 per day,
whereas the rate during the other three weeks was
less than 1 per day (p<0.05 for all comparisons).
Tweeting, blogging and slideshare
Social media activity around a conference paper –
slides uploaded to slideshare, blog posts written and
published; co-authors monitored and responded to
conference tweets.
1,291 views of the slides on Slideshare, compared
with 3 and 311 views for slides for two other papers
presented at the conference, which had been
uploaded to SlideShare.
Multimedia
J Phys D – articles with videos achieved 11,290 downloads
over a 12 month period compared to 3,536 without video.
Mendeley and citations
We found that Mendeley covers
more than 80% of sampled articles,
and that Mendeley bookmarks are
significantly correlated to Scopus
citation counts.
Altmetrics
Statistically significant
associations were found
between higher metric scores
and higher citations for articles
with positive altmetric scores in
all cases.
Communicating Science and Crises: Xuan Liang, Leona Yi-Fan Su,
Sara K. Yeo, Dietram A. Scheufele, Dominique Brossard, Michael Xenos, Paul Nealey,
and Elizabeth A. Corley
Building Buzz: (Scientists) Communicating Science in New Media Environments
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly December 2014 91: 772-791, first published
on September 12, 2014 doi:10.1177/1077699014550092
Our survey of highly cited U.S. nano-scientists,
paired with data on their social media use,
shows that public communication, such as
interactions with reporters and being
mentioned on Twitter, can contribute to a
scholar’s scientific impact. Most importantly,
being mentioned on Twitter amplifies the effect of interactions with journalists and other
non-scientists on the scholar’s scientific impact.
looking ahead
“One of the most important lessons I've
learned is that social media is not just
marketing for academic work. Social
media platforms can inform every step
of the research process: helping faculty
get a pulse on movement in their
industry, providing feedback during
research and then assisting in the
promotion of the published work.”
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-
education-
network/blog/2012/jul/24/social-media-academic-research-tool
Amanda Alampi
Social media manager
for NYU's Robert F
Wagner Graduate
School of Public Service
Social media in workflow
Two extreme views
1. A world where Oz is all powerful
and researchers never leave the
Emerald City.
2. Vanity-led and harmful to the
good name of research which
should stand on its own merits.
• The phrase ‘social media’ relegated to history!
• Explosion of interoperable niche ‘social media’ services
• Consolidation as big players buy-up and embedd market-
leading services in massive research workflow systems
• Emergence of scoring systems and more granular and predictive
metrics
• Rise of reputation management and dissemination/impact tools
Thank you!
Melinda KennewayFounder and Director, TBI Communications: www.tbicommunications.com
Executive Director, Kudos: www.growkudos.com
