Library Research Support: Social Media for Researchers

ResearchGate

ResearchGate was founded in 2008, and now boasts over 17 million members worldwide. It is free to join, and free to leave, and allows you to create and build on online profile, visible to other academic and commercial researchers, to share knowledge, expertise and scientific outputs. You can see who's been reading and citing your work within ResearchGate, engage in discussions by asking and answering questions, and explore and apply for research jobs advertised within the site.

• ResearchGate
• ResearchGate Help
• Examples of Durham University ResearchGate profiles

Academia.edu

A platform to allow researchers to share their research outputs with other academics, with a company mission to "accelerate the world's research," Academia.edu has over 95 million members worldwide, and provides access to over 23 million research papers.

• Academia.edu
• Academia.edu Support Centre
• Examples of Durham University Academia.edu profiles

LinkedIN

LinkedIN is an online professional network with over 400 million members worldwide. Whilst ResearchGate and Academia have a strong focus (and membership base) amongst the academic and wider research community, LinkedIN can help you raise your online profile and visibility around your research expertise and output to commercial, public sector and third sector employers, collaborators and potential beneficiaries.

• LinkedIN: Get Started for Free
• Durham Careers, Employability and Enterprise Centre guidance on using LinkedIN
• Examples of Durham Alumni on LinkedIN

Kudos

Kudos is a free to use platform for academic authors. It claims to be "the only platform dedicated to dissemination across the multiple networks and channels available to researchers for sharing information about their work," and works with publishers, universities, research funders, metrics providers and commercial and not-for-profit organisations to help researchers build and track impact for their work.

Kudos provides a simple toolkit to support authors in communicating their research to a broad audience, using plain language and recommending appropriate communication channels.

• Kudos: Register for free
• Kudos: Information for Researchers
• Kudos: User Guide

Further Reading

The below articles and publisher surveys on usage of social networks by academic users may be of interest:

• Meier, A & Tunger, D (2018) 'Survey on opinions and usage patterns for the ResearchGate platform' PLoS One doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0204945
• Veletsianos, G; Johnson, N & Belikov, O (2019) 'Academics social media use over time is associated with individual, relational, cultural and political factors' British Journal of Educational Technology doi:10.1111/bjet.12788
• Mazurek, G., Gorska, G., Korzynski, P & Silva, S. (2020) Social Networking Sites and Researcher’s Success, Journal of Computer Information Systems, DOI: 10.1080/08874417.2020.1783724
• Van Noorden, R (2014) 'Online collaboration: Scientists and the social network' Nature 512 doi:10.1038/512126a
• Staniland, M (2017)'How do researchers use social media and scholarly collaboration networks (SCNs)?' Nature Blogs
  • Raw data to above Springer Nature 2017 survey doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.5028212.v1
• Research Information Network (2011) 'Social Media: A guide for researchers (Researcher Case Studies)'

Springer/Nature Social Media Survey 2017: Data available under CC-BY 4.0 licence https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5028212.v1

Making it easy for people to access your research

If you are sharing your publication via social media:

• Include a DOI (where available) to provide a permanent, direct link to the published article.
  • it will also be picked up in altmetric data and (where someone has access), download statistics curated by the publisher.

But remember! Not everyone will have subscription access to your published output via the DOI if it isn't open access!

• Include a url to an open access version of the article (e.g. to the output in Durham Research Online, or the DOI if you have paid for open access for that article)
  • This will help anyone to access the article without hitting a subscription or paywall barrier.

It can be tricky to fit both links and some enticing text into a single tweet, but it can be done! Example in the image below:

Liberal & Conservative tribalism = human nature; How to disincentivise political tribalism, promote civil political discourse & reach compromise = crucial. Article from @ImHardcory, @EPoe187, @BizarroPolitix at https://t.co/uc90Qwn6ry (cant access? #oa at https://t.co/ilkmoOro4O)

— DurhamResearchOnline (@DROdurham) August 27, 2019

Hashtags

'Hashtags' help link posts which are related by theme, conversation or event. You can use them to:

• Highlight what your tweet is about - potentially reaching a wider or more interested readership than just those who already follow you.
• Join in with a current conversation where all participants include an agreed #hashtag
• Search for or 'follow' all tweets which have used a specific hashtag

Useful hashtags for academics when discussing issues or trending topics in academia include #academia, #acwri, #ecrchat and #phdchat. Some example tweets using #hashtags can be seen below:

I used Twitter to find scholars in research fields like mine or simply interested in discussing research on social media #PhDChat

— Raul (@hummingbird604) June 22, 2011

How’s the PhD affecting your Mental Health? #mentalhealth #MentalHealthAwareness #phdchat https://t.co/ENPSAPO7fE

— IPOl. In Pursuit of Life (@ipol_info) December 2, 2019

Images and Videos

Think about the content of your tweet - and trying to catch people's eye on a platform which values brevity.

• Tweets which include images are re-tweeted 35% more than text-only tweets.
• Tweets which include video content are re-tweeted 28% more than text-only tweets.

[data source: Twitter (2014)]

But some things to remember:

• Make sure that your content is relevant (or, if just intended as interesting/amusing to catch attention, is at least related to your message or research).
• Think about your signal-noise ratio! Whilst it is better to engage with people as a 'person' rather than ONLY pushing your latest publication, do try and keep a balance if this is a primary route for you to talk about your research.
• Remember to consider and check the copyright permissions for any image you re-use!

#DROPickoftheweek: 'Mother–Child Attachment From Infancy to the Preschool Years: Predicting Security and Stability' co-authored by @cfernyhough (@DurhamPsych) https://t.co/zWtUkVB3RZ (https://t.co/yvZ2mPRjmQ) P.s. not about polar bears... pic.twitter.com/0fSnk915D3

— DurhamResearchOnline (@DROdurham) August 21, 2020

Timing your Twitter Activity

Do think about timing in how you share information and engage with others on Twitter.

1. Don't worry about missing something.. if it was important, it will come around again.
2. If tweeting about your own research:
   • Think about what might be the best time to reach your intended audience.
   • The early morning or evening, or between 11am and 1pm are often good times to share content.
   • But what about reaching audiences in different timezones?
   • You can use tools such as Followerwonk or Audiense (all offer both free and premium services) to analyse your followers and activity to identify core times for reaching your audience via Twitter.
3. Don't be afraid to repeat key tweets at different times over the following days/weeks (although be reasonable and avoid spamming followers)
   • You could use #hashtags such as #TBThursday (throw back Thursday) to highlight messages previously shared, or drop your message into different conversations you becomes engaged with.

Your Twitter Profile

Your Twitter handle (your username on twitter - it is publically visible) and your short Bio are key tools to enable a potential follower to assess whether your content will be of interest to them.

Here are some quick tips and example handles/bios:

Your Twitter Handle

• If possible, use a single handle across all social media platforms you wish to keep connected (e.g. if you blog, have an instagram or facebook account)
• Use a relevant name if possible to aid people discovering your profile if they search by keyword
• Avoid using numbers (some users may mistake your profile for a spam or bot account - which frequently use random alpha-numeric combinations for a handle)
• Keep it short - and if possible, easy to remember!

Your Twitter Bio(graphy)

• You are very limited in terms of space (160 characters) - use it well!
  • Treat it as the introduction to your "brand" - an elevator pitch to let people know what you are all about, and what they can expect from your twitter activity.
• You don't need to use full sentences!
  • Use keywords, but avoid text speak.
  • Avoid block capitals which can be interpreted as "shouting" or aggressive.
  • Use hashtags and include handles of other related accounts.
  • Include a disclaimer if you are linked to an identifiable organisation (e.g. "views my own")
  • Highlight key facts or esteem factors about yourself if your own profile.
  • Be careful about overuse of emojis, which often have issues around accessibility (e.g. how they are treated by screen reading software)
• You can include in the space provided a link to a web page: this could be your Durham Staff Profile, your ORCID, or any personal or other online profile you wish.

Managing your time and other tools

There are tools available to help you manage your Twitter interactions more efficiently. This can be helpful where:

• You are responsible for multiple Twitter accounts (personal, research group, scholarly society, department, research project);
• You want to post the same message to one or more different profiles or platforms simultaneously;
• You wish to schedule some posts in advance;
• You want a single place to view your own activity and interactions.

Services we use include:

• Tweetdeck is a user dashboard owned by Twitter which allows you to see content from those you follow, as well as allowing you view in a single interface all mentions, replies and direct messages, as well as display any tweets mentioning particular terms, hashtags or posted by particular users.
• Hootsuite offers both free and premium plans: the free plan allows you to manage up to 3 profiles, and schedule up to 30 tweets in advance (Correct as at September 2020).
• IFTTT (or "if this, then that") is a platform hosting numerous 'apps' which you can link to your twitter, email, dropbox and other accounts to automate such activity. This has potential both for saving time but also for data collection for both research and impact- purpose/outreach tracking purposes. This could include:
  • automating replies when someone mentions you on twitter.
  • acknowledging and thanking new followers.
  • notify you when a new post mentioning a particular hashtag is tweeted.
  • creating a spreadsheet of all of your tweets (or all tweets related to a particular profile or hashtag).
  • automatically tweet when you add a blog post to a linked blog account.

Searching Twitter

You don't need a Twitter account to see what is happening in the 'twittersphere' - you can search twitter using their search interface here. This can be useful if you don't want an account with twitter, but want to see what people are saying on Twitter at a conference you are attending (or can't attend!) - and you know the #hashtag being used by the conference.

When searching twitter, you can also use the following tools to improve your search experience (or use their advanced search interface here or one of the APIs provided by twitter):

Remember, you can also use apps available via IFTTT to then automate searches and exporting tweets if this is of interest.