A talk for the SGM Spring 2012 Conference in Dublin http://www.sgm.ac.uk/meetings/MTGPAGES/DU07.cfm

1. Social Media For Researchers
Maximizing your personal impact
Alan Cann
School of Biological Sciences
University of Leicester
Find me here: bit.ly/AJCann
This talk: www.slideshare.net/AJCann
More info: delicious | CiteUlike

2. You want microbiology?
We got microbiology!
Google
Twitter – foaf
Google+ – search
Facebook
Scoop.it

3. Social media: A guide for researchers
Cann, Dimitriou
& Hooley (2011)
Social media: A guide
for researchers
Research Information
Network

4. What is Impact?
• “the demonstrable contribution that
excellent research makes to society and
the economy” (RCUK)
• What about personal impact?
• “Continual publishing across journals,
blogs and social media maximises impact
by increasing the size of the „academic
footprint‟ ” (LSE Impact blog)

5. “It’s easy for you to say that”
But is top-down innovation possible?

6. Social media for researchers
The “academic research cycle”

8. There is no “right way” but:
• Identification of knowledge
• Creation of knowledge
– more effective collaboration
– opportunities to forge new collaborations
– drawing on expertise to help with research
– receiving feedback as you go
– raising the profile of your work more rapidly than conventional publishing
• Quality assurance of knowledge
– competitive funding
– ethical approval
– academic line-management
– peer scrutiny at conferences
– peer review
– publication
– post-publication review, citation
• Dissemination of knowledge

9. Clay Shirky (2010):
"Participants are different. To participate is to act as
if your presence matters, as if, when you see
something or hear something, your response is part
of the event."

10. Criticisms of social media
• Growth of technology – technodeterminism?
• Privacy
• Banality
• Peripherality
• Loss of an authoritative perspective
• Work/life balance

11. What could possibly go wrong?
• Opening the kimono?
• Ethics?
• Peer review?
• The media?
• And? Murphy‟s Law?
despair.com

12. Making an Impact:
Beyond Citations
“Recognising and rewarding digital scholarship is
significant for two reasons:
The first is the message it sends to individuals within
the university…
The second reason to recognise digital scholarship is
to encourage institutional innovation.”
The Digital Scholar: How Technology Is Transforming Scholarly Practice

13. AJC European Tour 2012

14. It‟s not about tools, it‟s about
creating the right network
Bad networks!
Good networks!

16. Just do it.