Social Media Tools: Where are We Now and Do They Work?

Dan PollockSSP 32ND ANNUAL MEETING2 June 2010

A peer to peer activity

FIRST, to place before the general public the grand results of Scientific Work and Scientific Discovery ; and to urge the claims of Science to a more general recognition in Education and in Daily Life ;

And, SECONDLY, to aid Scientific men [sic] themselves, by giving early information of all advances made in any branch of Natural knowledge throughout the world, and by affording them an opportunity of discussing the various Scientific questions which arise from time to time.

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Social Media Dimensions

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Peer Review

PR before Social Media

• Screenshot: email/web

PR now…

• Twitter - Nature Chemistry

Content – 3rd party

ShareThis - trends

- Email is still a critical part of sharing on the web today, making up 38% of all sharing- Facebook has exploded, growing from ~30% to 39% of all sharing on the web- Other social channels, such as Digg, Reddit, and others, have dropped from ~20% a year ago to 13% today - Twitter was barely registering on our reports a year ago and is now around 8.7% of all our shares

Source: http://blog.sharethis.com/ Based on 130,000 sites

Content – “intramural”

• “Share this” facilities

• UGC: blogs, comments

• Volunteers vs. Editorial input (staff vs community blogs)

• T&Cs: moderation

• Audience: scientist to scientist; scientist to lay person; public vs private spaces.

Nature Peer Review Trial

Is the market really ready?

• The Web allows frictionless, instant, informal communication,

• but much utility lies outside the formal publishing process.

• Should publishers – the communications experts – move first…

• …or should academia start measuring contributions in new ways?

d.pollock@nature.comwww.nature.com

Thank you!