Maximise your impact with social networking

With the introduction of social networking, the current model of research dissemination and scientific publishing is becoming outdated. The way we share our research findings are changing; arguably for the better. Authors can self-promote their research outputs on social media platforms, reaching a wider audience. So how does a researcher harness the power of social media to improve the impact of their research? Here, I will discuss the options for maximising the profile of your work and why that is important.

Scientific success measured through impact

The success of our research outputs is measured by the impact we make on the subject we study and the people we work with. Be that in our institutions or the scientific community as a whole. 

But what does impact actually mean? One thing is for sure, it has a different meaning for everyone. Yet we are judged against a nebulous outcome measure that has far reaching consequences on career progression, future success, and the safety of our posts. 

The research-cycle consists of conceptualising a research idea, applying for and obtaining funding, performing a programme of experiments, and research dissemination through publication. 

There are two rate limiting steps in this process, obtaining research funding and publishing the generated data. Both rely heavily, not only on the quality of the work, but arguably more so, the reputation of the scientist within the research community. This highlights the importance of professional reputation on research success.          

Research impact and career progression

Surely, completing the research-cycle is an acceptable marker of success? Sadly not! We are judged by the prestige and monetary value of the funding we obtain and the quality of the research journals in which we publish our work. 

But what makes a ‘quality’ journal? Sadly it’s not the end user experience of the author or the underlying editorial processess. It’s all to do with impact factor, a derivative measure of research impact based on citations over a particular timeframe. 

Journals with a large readership were often considered more prestigious. Manuscripts published in these journals were more likely to receive citations which resulted in a greater amount of esteem for the authors. 

Using social media to increase research impact

The way we disseminate our research findings are changing. In an era of social media and open access publishing, the historic model of scientific publishing is becoming outdated. Especially when you consider that reviewers often review for multiple journals across a range of impact factors. Therefore, you are not guaranteed a more robust review just because a journal has a higher impact factor. 

Articles often receive post-publication peer review. This can be through comments on a journal website or more commonly through social networking sites such as Twitter. 

Is this not a more reliable measure of impact? An (often) unbiased critique of a manuscript by the research community, after all, this is who we are trying to influence.  

When it comes to publishing and grant applications, how often do we hear, I was unlucky with the reviewers, or it just comes down to luck? 

Getting your work published in a higher impact factor journal isn’t simply down to quality, it’s the ability of your manuscript to accrue citations. After all, that’s the only way of improving the impact factor of a journal. 

And sadly, journals do get it wrong. The story of Noble prize-winning research being rejected by a journal based on the opinions of a single reviewer (reviewer 2) highlights the need for change. How can a process such as this be a benchmark and gateway to success? 

A new model for disseminating research findings

Historically, authors have shared their research findings with the scientific community through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at conferences. A limitation of this approach is the lack of discussion and sharing of ideas between authors and the research community. 

With the introduction of open access publishing, it is now possible to share full-text articles to a wider readership beyond that offered by the journal alone. Especially if using social networking sites as a platform for sharing. 

It is not surprising that Lamb et al found that papers with higher twitter activity receive more citations[1]. A finding that questions the validity of the current publishing model and raises the questions, 

• Do we still need journals to disseminate our research? 
• Can we not simply share our work through social media platforms and participate in a ‘post-print’ discussion?

Until alternative metrics of impact are introduced, validated, and accepted by the research community, the only option is to persevere with attempting to publishing manuscripts in higher impact factor journals. 

To help with this process, one option is to develop your online academic identity and promote your work to a bigger audience, thus increasing your chances of accruing citations. 

Harnessing online platforms to profile academic activity

As I mentioned earlier, the way we disseminate our research findings is continually changing. We can now promote our academic outputs using social networking platforms such as Twitter, ResearchGate, and Mendeley or websites such as Google Scholar and Publons. 

However, it can be difficult to decide which of these platforms to use. The time required to maintain an up to date profile, means it is not feasible to maintain several accounts. 

Below, I have reviewed the different platforms, describing the benefits and limitations of each approach in promoting your research.  

Twitter

Twitter, a microblogging social networking site, is open to anyone with an email account. This means that anyone can read your posts and manuscripts can have potentially limitless impact. 

For many, this is a unique opportunity to engage with their research community, share their research outputs and ideas, and answer comments posed by other users. There are no restrictions on who can comment on your work. 

There are no restrictions on who can comment on your work. You are limited to 280 characters, but it easy to link your paper for all to see. Below, shows a tweet by the journal Nature, promoting a manuscript “An intra-tumoral niche maintains and differentiates stem-like CD8 T cells”[2].

The tweet contains a ‘snapshot’ of the paper, some key figures, and a link to the complementary full-text article (blue text). The number of ‘retweets’ and ‘likes’ are also shown and gives a very useful indication of the tweets impact.  

The initial reach of your tweet is limited by your number of followers, but retweets and likes from your followers increases the reach of your tweet to your followers’ followers and so on. This makes twitter a powerful tool for disseminating research outputs. 

So powerful in fact that companies measure social media activity as a surrogate of research impact. Companies such as AltMetrics and PlumX Metrics, give impact scores based on social media activity linked to the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of an article. 

As shown above, the Altmetrics website offers information on the geographical location of the people interacting with your work as well as details of these interactions across the different social media platforms. 

Twitter also offers an analytics functions, called Twitter Analytics, which allows you to see the type and number of interactions with your tweets. This is very useful because you can see which aspects of your work is getting the most attention, much sooner than you would if you relied on citations alone. 

Benefits

1. Promotion of research outputs
2. No limit on what you promote: publications, presentation, research collaborations, grants, achievements of research students etc.
3. 24/7 engagement with the scientific community
4. Engagement with people outside your scientific community: politicians, journalists, charities, and the general public
5. Other users can promote your work through retweets

Limitations

1. Only 280 characters available per tweet
2. No control over what others say about your work
3. No option to promote peer-review activities

ResearchGate

ResearchGate, is a free to join social networking site for researchers. Authors create academic profiles which include publications, conference proceedings as well as being able to showcase other academic achievements such as degrees, prizes, and grant funding. 

Where appropriate, authors can self archive full-text versions of their publications.

Based on research outputs, ResearchGate creates an individual score, called the RG score, for each user. Within an individuals’ ResearchGate profile, information on a users’ total number of citations, recommendations, reads, and research interest as shown below. 

It is also possible to interact with other researchers by posting comments, replying to others’ posts, or sharing/recommending articles. This is the most interactive (Twitter excluded) of all the academic social networks, which also helps boost the ResearchGate score. 

Benefits

1. Promotion of publications, presentations, and educational achievements
2. Engagement with the scientific community by posting questions
3. Other users can recommend your work
4. Creating a lab team and share the research outputs
5. Users are given a ResearchGate score to reflect academic achievements and impacts 

Limitations

1. No option for promoting peer-review activities
2. Less participation by the wider scientific community compared with Twitter

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a free to use search engine which offers authors the option to list their publications as well as published abstracts. 

It also offers up to date information on citations, H-Index, and i10-index as shown below. 

Citing articles can also be found, so you can see who and what is being said about your work. Google Scholar lacks the interactive component seen with Twitter and ResearchGate, but the metric updates are prompt and research outputs can be sorted chronologically or by number of citations as shown below . This identifies your most impactful manuscripts.

Benefits

1. Promotion of publications and presentations
2. Offers bibliometric data such as citations, H-index, and i10-index 

Limitations

1. No option for promoting peer-review activities
2. No option to engage with the scientific community in active discussion

Mendeley

Mendeley, developed by Elsevier, is a free to use reference manager and academic social network. Users are able to showcase their academic outputs which include published papers and peer-reviews. 

There is an impact section (shown above) that gives up to date information on citations, H-Index, citations per year, media mentions, downloads, and reads. This can be tracked on a month by month basis, so you get a feel of how your scientific profile is evolving. 

For scientists with more formal roles in medical publishing, there is a section on editorships. 

Benefits

1. Promotion of publications, presentations, and peer-review
2. Offers bibliometric data such as citations and H-index  
3. Gives a performance timeline featuring reads, views, and media mentions

Limitations

1. No option to engage with the scientific community in active discussion
2. Impressions limited to members of the scientific community

Publons

Publons, owned by Clarivate Analytics, is a commercial website that allows users to showcase their peer-review contributions and published works. Publons verify each review, meaning your record can be used as evidence of esteem in institutional review processes or funding applications. 

Publication data is retrieved from Web of Science using your unique ID. Once you have completed your peer-review, simply forward your acknowledgment email from the journal to reviews@publons.com and this will be verified and added to your profile. 

Publons also offers personalised data on a range of bibliometric and review metrics including number of reviews, number of publications, total number of citations, H-index, and citation metrics per article and year as shown below.

Each September, Publons give awards to top performing reviewers across several fields. There is also a Publons Academy training programme for early career reviewers. 

Benefits

1. Promotion of publications and peer-review, which are individually validated
2. Offers bibliometric statistics such as citations, H-index, and number of reviews of a timeframe
3. Publons academy offers training to early career researchers who are commencing their peer-review portfolio
4. Awards offered to active reviewers which can be used as evidence of esteem in institutional review processes

Limitations

1. No option of presentation or other academic achievements
2. No option to engage with the scientific community in active discussion

Using these platforms, it is now possible to promote scientific outputs far beyond the constraints of a journal’s readership. With the introduction of open access pre-print repositories such as BioRXiv, do we still need the journal model for research dissemination? 

Social networking offers a platform for both peer-review and publicity. The DOI given to pre-prints allow activity on social networking sites to be captured by data science companies such as AltMetrics and PlumX metrics. 

Arguably, these are a more immediate measure of impact compared to citations, as citations take a while to accrue. Nevertheless, citations and impact factor remain the mainstay of measuring scientific impact.  

Grant funders and journals have really engaged with social networking. It is therefore advisable to develop your online scientific identify using a combination of the platforms detailed above. 

Which platform(s) you decide to use is down to your personal preference, with combinations covering networking, promotion of publications, and peer-review. It is not necessary to setup a profile on every platform, but Twitter, ResearchGate, and Publons cover most bases. 

After all, the aim is to get your work read by as many people as possible. That’s real impact!

I hope you find this post useful, please leave your comments below

THS

References

[1]       Lamb CT, Gilbert SL, Ford AT. Tweet success? Scientific communication correlates with increased citations in Ecology and Conservation. PeerJ 2018;6:e4564. doi:10.7717/peerj.4564.

 

[2]      Jansen CS, Prokhnevska N, Master VA, Sanda MG, Carlisle JW, Bilen MA, et al. An intra-tumoral niche maintains and differentiates stem-like CD8 T cells. Nature 2019;576:465–70. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1836-5.