A perfect place to pick-up arguments for why scientists should be on social media

‘An Introduction to Social Media for Scientists‘. I have wanted to mention this article published in PLOS Biology ever since it came out in April 2013, but somehow never got around to it. But as I reread it earlier this week, I was reminded how this article must be mentioned on a blog like mine.

An Introduction to Social Media for Scientists is written by Holly M. Bik and Miriam C. Goldstein from University of California Davis and University of California San Diego and is an excellent place to start for researchers considering trying out social media or for enthusiasts of social media for science communication who are in search of good arguments they can use to persuade others of why they must set up a Twitter account, start blogging or establish some other form of online presence.

Research Benefits and flowcharts

Supported by lots of examples (with links provided to many of them!) the authors list a number of ways in which social media can benefit both the scientist and the scientific work. In short form these are:

• How online tools can help improve research efficiency;
• How being visible on social media helps track and improve scientific metrics;
• How social media enhances professional networking; and
• How online interactions have the potential to enhance ‘‘broader impacts’’ by improving communication between scientists and the general public.

They go on to address different kinds of social media and how they can be used, and provide advice to new users on how to get started. A useful (and fun) feature of the article is a flowchart that can help newcomers find out which media might be most relevant for them to try out and solution to common online communication fears.

Acknowledging the stigma

Throughout the article the authors mention the stigma which is often attached to online activities. They acknowledge how many researchers are skeptical towards the media and regards it as a waste of time and a distraction from true scientific work. In a response to this the authors have set out to address some of the many misconceptions and misinterpretations of what social media can contribute with. And in my opinion it works. One could argue that they don’t spend much energy on the risks or disadvantages of social media for science communication (of which there are of course several), but they are plenty to be found elsewhere.

Need for formal training

Social media among scientists is quickly growing and will eventually become more and more natural for scientists to use (if not sooner than as the younger generation whom have grown up with social media enter the research arena). But until then there is a need to train on researchers and scholars on the potential of social media in academic work. Both to address the many misconception and skepticism but also to avoid researchers use it inefficiently or inappropriately. I could therefore not agree more with the authors:

“Social media and internet-based resources are increasingly ubiquitous. Thus, there is a pressing need for scientific institutions to offer formalized training opportunities for graduate students and tenured faculty alike to learn how to effectively use this new technology”.

New Public Health Blog from PLOS blogs!

I can’t believe that this is my post number 101. Actually, I had planned to do something special with blog post no. 100, but I only realised that it was my anniversary post when it was published. So the celebration will have to wait for post number 500.

However, post number 101 can also be special and actually I think the topic is quite appropriate: A public health science blog hosted by PLOS blogs has arrived! It is simply called ‘Public Health‘ and has five contributors coming from different backgrounds but all with an interest in Public Health.

The blog looks very promising and the posts currently posted are well written and interesting. I look forward to following the blog and hope for many discussions.

Public Health 2.0

Not surprisingly, I am especially happy to see that the topic of social media and public health is discussed on the blog. In the post Public Health 2.0: Electric Boogaloo by Atif Kukaswadia of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada draws attention to strengths and weaknesses of social media in public health. It is clear that Atif comes to this with an epidemiologist’s perspective (being and Ph.d. candidate in Epidemiology), but he raises some important questions about acknowledging that social media exists and that regardless of whether people with scientifically founded knowledge make use of social media or not, people spreading untrue or perhaps even harmful public health information will continue to do so. This is in my opinion an important argument which needs to be made also to the social media skeptics.

The post is full of great links, so newcomers to the topic of public health 2.0 should take a look at the post and join the discussion.

Social media and science conferences

Atif Kukaswadia opens the blog post with discussing what makes a good conference, and how it not necessarily what happens during the presentations and in the conference room, but rather the discussions that continue (or perhaps first starts) in the lunch room and during the coffee breaks. This make me wonder, if Atif Kukaswadia has been to the Science Online conferences, which acknowledges exactly that. These conferences are built up following a so-called ‘non-conference’ format and brings more space for the in-between-sessions-stuff. Based on my experiences the ScienceOnline people are the most advanced users of social media before, during and after conferences. For newcomers to social media in conferences it is actually quite overwhelming and a little extreme – but none the less a great eye-opener for the power of social media in conferences.

An interesting union: Wikipedia + journal articles

Scientists and researchers who still haven’t considered Wikipedia to be relevant for their academic career or who perhaps disregard Wikipedia for scientific purposes all together, might have to reconsider their point of view. At least they will have to get used to the fact that social media is sneaking its way into the other-wise so stable and non-surprising world of peer-reviewed journals.

The Open Access journal PLoS have taken on the task of making science available for everyone to read. In their endeavor to achieve this they have now gone to a new level, and are trying out the combination: peer-reviewed articles + Wikipedia. By mixing the two together, PLoS hopes to meet a new level of interaction between publishers, researchers and the public.

The guinea pig for this experiment is the journal PLoS Computational Biology.

By introducing so-called “Topic Pages”, which are a new article type building on the style of a Wikipedia article, PLoS makes peer-reviewed articles which are published in PLoS Computational Biology available on Wikipedia. The benefits of these Wikipedia style articles are 1) that they will help fill a gap in Wikipedia’s computational biology content; and 2) that the articles will be subject to ongoing review of wikipedians.

A third advantage, highlighted by Bonnie Swoger in a blog post in Scientific American, is that it may play an important role in convincing scientists to take an active role in adding content to Wikipedia, and in using social media for science communication in general. Bonnie Swoger points out that due to the organisation of universities and other research institutions, using time editing Wikipedia, being on Twitter etc. means less time for lab work, field work and scholarly writing. All of which is what matters in an academic career. Scientists therefor refrain from social media (or at least use it as an excuse). The trick of PLoS’ Topics Pages, which turns peer-reviewed articles into Wikipedia entries, makes it possible for researchers not only to produce original published articles, but also to contribute to public knowledge available on Wikipedia, and thereby potentially reaching much wider audiences.

It will be interesting to see how this new concept works out. I could definitely see it as something useful also in public health related research, which due to its public nature is probably even more likely to be found via Wikipedia than topics within computational biology are.

For an example of Topic Pages take a look at the article Circular permutation in protein in the Wikipedia format and the same article in a regular journal format. Both were published in Wikipedia and PLoS Computational Biology at the end of March this year.

Read more about PLoS reflections on the Journal-Wikipedia alliance in this editorial.

All papers at PLoS Medicine now reflect the public Twitter debate

Last week, I wrote how several scientific journals and publishers are opening their eyes to Twitter. The confirmation of the relevance on Twitter also in relation to peer-reviewed journals comes in many different forms. This weekend, I came across a tweet giving another example :

If you click on the link in the tweet (or here), you’ll come onto the webpage of PLoS Medicine and an article by McKee M, Stuckler D, Basu S (2012) entitled: Where There Is No Health Research: What Can Be Done to Fill the Global Gaps in Health Research?

In the righthand side column (under: “share this article” – which is BTW primarily through social media) you’ll see a box from Twitter, called “What the community is saying”. In this box a roll of all the tweets linking to the article are shown in chronological order with the newest first. The reasons for why people chose to include links to a particular article in their tweets may of course be many. It could be a simple wish to spread word of the article, but could also be comments and reactions to the article and additional links to for example blog posts discussing the article.

For the authors of the article this easy access to the Twitter activity concerning their article provides and opportunity to see what the segment, who are on Twitter, are saying about the article – and not least who they are. And for the readers it is a chance to check out who else have found this article relevant. Who knows, they might be people in your area of research you were not yet acquainted with.

The Twitter box is of course not unique to the article by Martin McKee & co. but applies to all PLoS Medicine articles.

Two not so separate worlds: Peer-reviewed journals and social media

Social media and peer-reviewed journals. Some people would regard this as two separate worlds and perhaps they were once upon a time, but times change and more and more journals are embracing, exploring new uses and expanding their traditional journal universe with blogs, Twitter accounts etc.

An editorial retreat at The British Medical Journal focusing on social media shows that journals and social media are definitely not worlds apart. As I have been on a pre-Easter break I was unfortunately not able to follow the Twitter stream from the meeting, but in the spirit of social media a Storify (a collection of tweets #BMJseminar) from the meeting has been put together. It gives a small peak into the highlights of the meeting.

Blogging journals

I have previously blogged about the BMJ and PLoS blogs and recently the blog of the International Journal of Public Health. Lately, I have also been following Richard Horton, Editor of the Lancet, on Twitter (@richardhorton1) where he actively tweets about the numerous meetings he attends. At times very entertain and very opinion born.

In addition, I just discovered The Lancet student blog, which aims to give medical students from around the world a place to talk about their experiences of medical school life, and  their thoughts on the top health issues of the day. The use of blogs, like they are used at BMJ and PloS, is however, as far as I can tell, nothing the Lancet has engaged in. I wonder why that is….