Science Communication & Social Media (part 2)

Karen Lips@kwren88

Slides posted here:http://figshare.com/authors/Karen%20Lips/278233

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR RESEARCH

What’s the best thing about Social Media?

"Social Media has provided us with the opportunity to have our own National Geographic or Discovery Channels to reach the general public”

“It gives you exposure to a much bigger part of the world. Kids can interact with scientists and form a more accurate and broader picture of what science is and what scientists do.”

Social media is like the conversations in the hallways at meetings. It is the Campfire around which we can gather and converse. It is the Virtual Water Cooler where we trade stories

From Liz Neeley

From Liz Neeley

From Ross Monce @Rmounce; Social Media: how it can help you do science

Why Use Social Media?• Boost your professional profile• Act as a public voice for science• Online outreach can help you get funding• Establish contact with reporters, media outlets• Increase impact of your papers• Open science & Collaboration• #icanhazpdf• Personalized news feed• Ask questions of experts• Live tweeting meetings

(From Paige Brown, Russ Mounce)

What are your goals?

• What do you want out of your social media experience?– Increased citations for your papers?– Increased visibility of your research?– Outlet for opinions?– Collaboration?– Open data and sharing?– Translation of science for broad audience?

(From titus brown, paige brown)

Suggestions

• Create & curate your Google Scholar page.• Make sure you have a Web page somewhere.• Create a Twitter account and follow people that

work in your area• When you publish,– Post data to figshare;– Write a guest blog post about paper– Add your Twitter handle to posts, talks, etc

(From Titus Brown)

DIVERSITY & SOCIAL MEDIA

SciComm Resources focused on Puerto Rico

What is the problem?“Science is produced at research centers within a few select

regions. This distribution contributes to “brain drain”—the cultural and geographical separation of researchers from their communities of origin…

This precludes achieving a critical mass of scientific expertise and the development of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)…

Displaced scientists become disconnected from home communities and colleagues, challenges in maintaining research collaborations...

Dispersion presents challenges to scientists who see themselves as underrepresented in the larger culture of science…”

Goals of CienciaPR

(1) promoting scholarly interaction among self-identified members of an otherwise dispersed community;

(2) providing visibility to diverse scientific role models; and

(3) supporting research and science education through initiatives that culturally resonate with our community of origin.

Figure 1. CienciaPR website use and member characteristics.

More PR-specific Resources

• http://www.cienciapr.org• http://biodiversidadpr.com• http://caribbeanpaleobiology.blogspot.com• http://biologiaboricua.com/• https://www.facebook.com/

salvemosloscoquies • http://www.coquiguajon.org

How would you define Impact?

A Proposal to Evaluate a Scientist’s Impact on Society

“If the ultimate goal is to evaluate a person’s true overall role as a scientist, I think we should be considering how they communicate with all people not just other scientists.” ~ Prosanta Chakrabarty (@LSU_Fish)

http://lsuichthyology.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-proposal-for-new-altmetric-influence.html

Influence Score = (H-Index X 100) + (Press index/100) + (Social Media-

Index/100)

H-index = citations of scientific publications

• H-index*100• The H-index can be easily calculated in

Google Scholar. Google Scholar counts books and other non-traditional peer-reviewed publications, and it is free!

Press Index = visibility with the press

• PI= #articles/100• Using Google News, one simple puts the

person’s name in the search box and counts the number of articles that are found, which Google also does for you

Social Media Index or SM-index

• SMI= #followers/100

• For someone on Twitter you get 1pt for every follower. For someone not on Twitter but that has either a Facebook “Fan” Page or Facebook “followers,” you get 1pt per fan or follower.

http://lsuichthyology.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-proposal-for-new-altmetric-influence.html

Quantifying your full Impact

• Altmetrics – a way of quantifying downloads, clicks, shares, likes of a particular scientific product (paper, posters, talks)

• ImpactStory – all the various kinds of impacts of your products

What reach do your papers have beyond citations in other scientific papers?

ImpactstoryBlogs, shares, clicks, press coverage, etc

For example:http://impactstory.org/user51076

Examples of paper reach: who, what, how

Details of how paper was shared and spread

What reach does any paper have?

Altmetrics:Add this bookmarklet to your toolbar so you can

measure the reach of any paper:http://www.altmetric.com/bookmarklet.php

For example: news coverage

For example: spread by Twitter

For example: How does this relate to other articles in this journal?

For example: who is reading my paper? What is my international reach?

USE OF TWITTER IN RESEARCH (& HOW TO QUANTIFY YOUR REACH)

What are your goals for using twitter?

• What do you want out of your social media experience?– Increased citations for your papers?– Increased visibility of your research?– Outlet for opinions?– Collaboration?– Open data and sharing?– Translation of science for broad audience?

(From titus brown, paige brown)

Tweeting increases the reach of your science

“Highly tweeted articles were 11 times more likely to be highly cited than less tweeted articles…

Top-cited articles can be predicted from top-tweeted articles with 93% specificity an 73% sensitivity”

Eysenback, 2011J Med Internet Res; 13(4): e123

@Katie_PhD

•Getting started on twitter•Directory of scientists

Sample statistics

What is my geographic reach?

Example of my twitter network connections (people & #topics) for the past week

For the past week, how far did my tweets go?

Use of twitter by scientific societies

by @Craken_MacCraic & @whysharksmatter & @emilysdarling

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR TEACHING

"Social Media can serve as a great tool to inspire younger generations to follow careers in science"

Smartphone apps for field biologists

http://brunalab.org/apps/

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR OUTREACH(TO THE MEDIA,

POLICYMAKERS, THE PUBLIC)

"Social Media helps scientists connect with the public in a neutral, non-

intimidating setting"

INaturalist

How does this affect

me?

Other Useful Apps

Academic networking:• Mendeley• Academia.com• LinkedIn

Sharing talks, posters, code• Figshare• Slideshare• Github

Organizing• Dropbox• Evernote• Pocket• Feedly

General Social Media Resources• It’s Time for Scientists to Tweet:

http://theconversation.com/its-time-for-scientists-to-tweet-14658• Social Networking for Scientists: The Wiki

http://socialnetworkingforscientists.wikispaces.com/General• How to Build an Enduring Online Research Presence Using Social Networking

and Open Science, SlideShare, Titus Brown http://www.slideshare.net/c.titus.brown/2013-beaconcongresssocialmedia

• Darling et al. (2013).The role of Twitter in the life cycle of a scientific publication. https://peerj.com/preprints/16v1/

• Bik, H. M., & Goldstein, M. C. (2013). An Introduction to Social Media for Scientists. PLoS biology, 11(4), e1001535.

• Liz Neeley. 2014. A fresh look at social media for scicomm. Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/LizNeeley/fresh-look-at-social-media-for-science-communication-decodesci

From Paige Brown: Social Media for Scientists, with additions