Openness and Impact in Academia Using Social MediaJane Tinkler, LSE Public Policy GroupLondon School of Economics

Critical Perspectives on ‘Open-ness’ in the Digital University, Edinburgh University, November 2012

Traditional academic communication is fairly ‘closed’• Core set of journal articles, conference papers, books and

chapters, and occasional book reviews.• Journal articles and books are read by some in your field,

but don’t often break into other disciplines and are rarely picked up by the media. • The texts of books and articles are inaccessible to those

without subscription/library access.• Outputs are often fairly long and in language that is

sometimes meaningful only to other academics.• This reflects a one-way (experts only) communications

process.

Digital academic communication can be more ‘open’• Growth of ejournal subscriptions and ebooks that can be

accessed simultaneously by student groups as well as those working off-site.• University websites and online depositories host

academic research for those outside the academy who want to read them. • The ‘academic spring’ pressure for research to be open

access has gathered pace and now some funders and the UK government are supporting this move.• Universities and academics are taking up opportunities

provided by social media for communication and dissemination on the back of the ‘impact agenda’.

How does using social media help make your research more ‘open’?

1. Put very simply, it allows more people to read your research.

A team from the World Bank examined the influence of economic blogs on download figures for articles

A team from NCRM compared the effect of twitter and other communication channels on a paper’s downloads

An individual academic used twitter to share a link to her work

How does using social media help make your research more ‘open’?

1. Put very simply, it allows more people to read your research.2. This is especially the case for some disciplines and some

sectors where debates are increasingly taking place online.

Overall 11% of external references to academic work in our dataset were from blogs

Economics

IR

Business/Management

Geography

Political Science

Sociology

Social Policy

Anthropology

Law

History

Psychology

Philosophy

Media

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

% external refs from blogs

References to academic work in blogs vary widely by sector

Government

Think tanks

Private sector

Media/press

Civil society

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

% external refs from blogs

How does using social media help make your research more ‘open’?

1. Put very simply, it allows more people to read your research.2. This is especially the case for some disciplines and some

sectors where debates are increasingly taking place online.3. It also helps you to read more (or more wisely) within your

discipline, as well as in ‘near’ subjects. 4. Which can lead to increased collaborations with other

academics outside your usual networks. Our research has shown cross-disciplinary, multi-authored and multi-institutional works have more impact.

Collaboration leads to increased citations

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 or more

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

Co-authorship and Number of Outputs

Number of Co-authors

Nu

mb

er

of

Ou

tpu

ts

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 or more

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

Co-authorship and Citations

Number of Co-authors

Cit

ati

on

s r

eceiv

ed

Most outputs in our dataset were single authored, but more cites went to outputs that had at least one other author

How does using social media help make your research more ‘open’?

1. Put very simply, it allows more people to read your research.2. This is especially the case for some disciplines and some

sectors where debates are increasingly taking place online.3. It also helps you to read more (or more wisely) within your

discipline, as well as in ‘near’ subjects. 4. Which can lead to increased collaborations with other

academics outside your usual networks. Our research has shown multi-authored, multi-institutional works have more impact.

5. Being part of an academic online community = event publicity, support, guidance, fact-checking and more.

Open-ness and impact

1. The first step towards creating impact is making your research more open and visible.

2. Use freely available tools to create a public profile for you and your work.

Create a Google Scholar Citation profile

Open-ness and impact

1. The first step towards impact is making your research more open and visible.

2. Use freely available tools to create a public profile for you and your work.

3. Make full use of your university’s resources (like online depositories, Expert directories, knowledge transfer schemes).

4. Build communication and dissemination plans into research projects early on.

5. Work with stakeholders and intermediary organisations to help make your research more open.

6. BUT be realistic as to what you can expect.

Just over a quarter of academic references were from external sources

University departments (20%)

Academic publishers

and journals(20%)

All libraries (14%)

Digital aggregators (4%)Academic

assocs. and societies

(7%)

Independent think tanks

(4%)

Media and press (5%)

Civil society and third sector (7%)

Govt & policy (5%)

Private sector (3%)

Individs

(4%)

Univ. centres

and instits. (7%)

Digitalresearch

databases

Acad

emic

rese

arch

and

eng

agem

ent

Does ‘open-ness’ have drawbacks? 1. The focus on dissemination and impact can feel like a new

responsibility in addition to all the other things you do as an academic.

Time pressures and lack of resources are real constraints on open-ness and impact

Higher Education Institution

Private / public / third sector organisation

Lack of time Bureaucracy and inflexibility of

HEI administration Difficulties in identifying partners Insufficient rewards and lack of

awareness of the benefits from the interactions

Lack of understanding by academics of the process

Capacity and capability of the KE system still developing / evolving

Lack of resources within external organisations to fund the KE engagement

Insufficient benefits from the interaction

Lack of interest by external organisations and lack of demand for KE

Intellectual property agreements as a barrier to some, albeit minority of, KE engagement

Source: PACEC/CBR Survey of Academics (2008); PACEC/CBR Survey of Enterprise Offices (2010); CBR Survey of Enterprises (2008)

Does ‘open-ness’ have drawbacks? 1. The focus on dissemination and impact can feel like a new

responsibility in addition to all the other things you do as an academic.

2. If you start a blog or create a twitter feed for a project, you need to keep these up which takes times and resources.

3. Being open with your research methods, stakeholders or findings could place restrictions on what you feel you can say.

4. Moderating the quality of discussion and debate via social media tools can be hard. This can’t replace peer review but some quality assurances can be built into how social media is used.

5. You can receive instant feedback on your work, and it is all public. Can be very nerve-wracking for individual academics and universities.

For more see:

Maximising the Impacts of your Research: A handbook for social scientists

Using Twitter in University Research, Teaching andImpact Activities: A guide for academics and

researchers

Freely available to download from the Impact of Social Sciences blog:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/ Email: impactofsocialsciences@lse.ac.uk

Twitter: @lseimpactblogFacebook: Impact of Social Sciences