openness and impact in academia using social media jane tinkler, lse public policy group london...
Post on 28-Mar-2015
219 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
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
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).
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
top related