A talk for Oxford University Press on March 14th 2012.

1. Is social media worth it?
Alan Cann
University of Leicester.
Internet Consulting Editor
Annals of Botany.
bit.ly/AJCann

2. Be where the conversation is
twitter.com/annbot www.scoop.it/annbot
aobblog.com
plus.google.com
www.facebook.com/AnnalsOfBotany

3. Write once, publish everywhere
mobile
pinterest.com/alancann/aob-plants
iPad

4. Why?
“The article as homepage”
David Weinberger: “Small pieces loosly joined”
"When I was struggling to position the website I made a mistake... I
thought we should do the same online as we did in print, simply
transferring from one platform to the other. But we carried out research
around the world among educated people who didn't read the Economist
and discovered, to our surprise, that it wasn't what they wanted.” He
came to realise that there was a distinction between what he calls the
"lean-back, immersive, ritual pleasure" of reading the Economist in print
compared to the "lean-forward, interactive" way people used the site. It
was, says Rashbass, the difference between "snacking on the net as
against the gourmet meal of reading in print". That convinced him and his
team to offer an entirely different experience to website users. Rather
than lecturing the audience, they set out to build a community of people
eager to participate in discussions with the magazine's journalists and
with each other."
Andrew Rashbass, chief executive of the Economist group
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/27/andrew-rashbass-economist-group-interview

5. Does it sell subscriptions?
“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look
at the results.” Winston Churchill
Branding vs. marketing vs. science education
The Annals of Botany Company is a non-profit educational
charity. What are we selling?

6. How are we doing?

7. Look over your shoulder
arXiv
http://arxiv.org/
JISC: Economic implications of alternative scholarly publishing models: Exploring
the costs and benefits
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/reports/2009/economicpublishingmodelsfinal
report.aspx
F1000 Research – join us and shape the future of scholarly communication
http://f1000research.com/2012/01/30/f1000-research-join-us-and-shape-the-
future-of-scholarly-communication-2/
Melissa Terras: What happens when you tweet an open access paper
http://melissaterras.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-happens-when-you-tweet-
open-access.html
Chris Willmott: Institutional repositories, social media and academic publication:
a simple experiment
http://lefthandedbiochemist.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/institutional-
repositories-and-academic-publication-a-simple-experiment/

8. altmetrics delicious.com/ajcann/altmetrics
altmetrics: a manifesto
altmetrics.org/manifesto
"Right now we're going through a Cambrian explosion of metrics”
www.nature.com/news/2010/100616/full/465864a.html
Your correspondent's advice: the only way to go is to take the plunge and start
talking, loudly and often. Well, not too often. Babbage
www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/05/social_networking
Edupunk motto "Just do it".

9. Credits
Pat Heslop Harrison
David Frost & Alex Bunning
Alun Salt, creative genius
AoB Editorial Board, especially Nigel
Chaffey
bit.ly/AJCann