Openness and Impact in Academia Using Social Media

1. Openness and Impact in Academia Using Social Media Jane Tinkler, LSE Public Policy Group London School of Economics Critical Perspectives on ‘Open-ness’ in the Digital University, Edinburgh University, November 2012

2. 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.

3. 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’.

4. How does using social media help make your research more ‘open’? • Put very simply, it allows more people to read your research.

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

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

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

8. How does using social media help make your research more ‘open’? • Put very simply, it allows more people to read your research. • This is especially the case for some disciplines and some sectors where debates are increasingly taking place online.

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

10. References to academic work in blogs vary widely by sector

11. How does using social media help make your research more ‘open’? • Put very simply, it allows more people to read your research. • This is especially the case for some disciplines and some sectors where debates are increasingly taking place online. • It also helps you to read more (or more wisely) within your discipline, as well as in ‘near’ subjects. • 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.

12. Collaboration leads to increased citations Most outputs in our dataset were single authored, but more cites went to outputs that had at least one other author

13. How does using social media help make your research more ‘open’? • Put very simply, it allows more people to read your research. • This is especially the case for some disciplines and some sectors where debates are increasingly taking place online. • It also helps you to read more (or more wisely) within your discipline, as well as in ‘near’ subjects. • 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. • Being part of an academic online community = event publicity, support, guidance, fact-checking and more.

14. Open-ness and impact • The first step towards creating impact is making your research more open and visible. • Use freely available tools to create a public profile for you and your work.

15. Create a Google Scholar Citation profile

16. Open-ness and impact • The first step towards impact is making your research more open and visible. • Use freely available tools to create a public profile for you and your work. • Make full use of your university’s resources (like online depositories, Expert directories, knowledge transfer schemes). • Build communication and dissemination plans into research projects early on. • Work with stakeholders and intermediary organisations to help make your research more open. • BUT be realistic as to what you can expect.

17. Just over a quarter of academic references were from external sources Civil society and third sector (7%) Govt & policy (5%) Media and press (5%) Individs (4%) Private sector (3%) Academic research and engagement Digital aggregators (4%) Independent think tanks (4%) Academic assocs. and societies (7%) Academic publishers and journals (20%) All libraries (14%) Digital research databases Univ. centres and instits. (7%) University departments (20%)

18. Does ‘open-ness’ have drawbacks? • The focus on dissemination and impact can feel like a new responsibility in addition to all the other things you do as an academic.

19. Time pressures and lack of resources are real constraints on open-ness and impact Private / public / third sector organisation Higher Education Institution • 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 • 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 Source: PACEC/CBR Survey of Academics (2008); PACEC/CBR Survey of Enterprise Offices (2010); CBR Survey of Enterprises (2008)

20. Does ‘open-ness’ have drawbacks? • The focus on dissemination and impact can feel like a new responsibility in addition to all the other things you do as an academic. • If you start a blog or create a twitter feed for a project, you need to keep these up which takes times and resources. • Being open with your research methods, stakeholders or findings could place restrictions on what you feel you can say. • 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. • You can receive instant feedback on your work, and it is all public. Can be very nerve-wracking for individual academics and universities.

21. For more see: Maximising the Impacts of your Research: A handbook for social scientists Using Twitter in University Research, Teaching and Impact 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: @lseimpactblog Facebook: Impact of Social Sciences

22. A quick ‘how to’ guide: academic blogs • Blogs are quick to set up and start (using Wordpress or Blogger) but take time and resources to maintain. • Will your blog be single or multi-authored? • Think about your audience, who are you aiming your blog at? • Think about your written style, blogs are usually: • More informal in style • Much shorter articles (we aim for max 1,000 words) • Hyperlinks to key own or others’ articles instead of references • Main points or arguments in the first paragraph • Make use of other social media tools to disseminate blog posts (Twitter, Facebook, Pintrest, Storify).

23. A quick ‘how to’ guide: Twitter styles • Substantive - full sentences, independently understandable, a taster for a blog post • Conversational - eclectic content, professional and personal life, diverse topics • Middle ground - more personality but still professional, create discussions