SciencesLeveraging Social Media and Crowdsourcing Applications in Scientific Research

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Areej Al-Wabil, PhD
College of Computer and Information Sciences
Leveraging Social Media and
Crowdsourcing Applications
in Scientific Research

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Scholars and Social Media

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Scholars and Social Media

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Scholars and Social Media
Online Communities and Social Computing

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Social Media
Push & Pull

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Social media outlets are becoming
essential for academia, not just for
the promotion of research but for
research development
Find. Use. Disseminate

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..‘search’ can provide you with answers only to the
questions you ask, whereas social media can also
provide you with intelligently-filtered information
that helps to stimulate new questions, in the same
way that a conversation with a colleague might.

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Using social media for research and academic purposes to:
• Bridge disciplinary boundaries,
• Engage in knowledge exchange with industry and policy
makers,
• Provide a channel for the public communication of
research

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Scholars and Social Media
The 2014 Nature Survey

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Scholars and Social Media
The 2014 Nature Survey

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Scholars and Social Media
The 2014 Nature Survey

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Research Gate
Communication. Collaboration

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Research Gate
Communication. Collaboration. Productive Engagement?

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Academia.edu
The Saudi Sphere

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Crowdsourcing
Reaching out to Researchers and Scientists

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Social media Tools

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Social Networking Tools
‫أدوات‬‫شبكات‬‫التواصل‬‫االجتماعية‬

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Social Networking Tools
‫أدوات‬‫شبكات‬‫التواصل‬‫االجتماعية‬

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Social Media for
Research and Academic Purposes
Perspectives..

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Scholars and Social Media

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(1) Consuming Social Media
Information overload?

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Scholars and Social Media
Can we use our social or professional networks to filter the vast array of information down to something that is manageable?

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(2) Producing Social Media

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(2) Producing Social Media
"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.“
Social Media theorist Clay Shirky (2010)

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Scholars and Social Media
From a one-to-many approach to a many-to-many approach

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(3) Criticism of Social Media

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Scholars and Social Media
Research Information Network

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Scholars and Social Media
Research Information Network
Researchers and academics often fear that the quality of public and academic discussion and
debate is being undermined

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(3) Answering the Criticisms of Social Media
‘Social media’ covers a wide range of tools and
different ways of using them. It is important to be
precise in making and responding to these kinds of
criticisms.
Disclosure – Legal and Policy frameworks

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Academic Research Cycle
‫ما‬‫هو‬‫دور‬‫شبكات‬‫التواصل‬‫االجتماعية‬‫في‬‫البحث‬‫العلمي؟‬

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There is no single ’right way’ for researchers
to use social media. How you use them will
depend on you, your discipline, those around
you and the research you are doing.

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Academic Research Cycle
 Maintaining one-to-one correspondence with
everyone who might be useful to you however, quickly
results in information overload.
 The many-to-many forms of communication that
characterise social media offer a more manageable way
to stay in touch with a wide variety of researchers with
whom you share interests.

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Academic Research Cycle
Identification of Knowledge
 Social media can help you both to discover more and
to filter more effectively.
 Social media can help to enhance your research
capacity within the time limits and workload constraints
academic researchers usually face
 Harness your network to help with both discovery
and filter

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Academic Research Cycle
Identification of Knowledge

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Academic Research Cycle
Creation of Knowledge
 Why would you need social media, especially when there are real
risks in communicating what you are doing while you are doing it?
 Moving findings into the public domain before they are ready can
endanger your ability to publish and potentially provide people with
ammunition that they can use against you.
 Why make your mistakes in public?
• Opportunities to forge new collaborations and benefit
from the experience of others
• Drawing in expertise to help with research processes (use
of techniques, methods and analysis)
• Receiving feedback as you go rather than waiting until
you reach high stakes moments like submitting to journals
and presenting conference papers
• Raising the profile of your work more rapidly than
conventional academic publishing allows.

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Academic Research Cycle
Creation of Knowledge
Managing the balance between openness and disclosure requires you to
think carefully about how you work and what you are trying to achieve.
There is no right or wrong answer here.

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Academic Research Cycle
Quality Assurance of Knowledge
 competitive funding mechanisms
 ethical approval
 academic line-management
 peer scrutiny at conferences
 peer review
 publication
 post-publication review
 citation

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Academic Research Cycle
Quality Assurance of Knowledge
 Social media are not just about an explosion of information.
 They also provide users with tools to filter, recommend and
comment on quality (objective measures)
 Some tools are capable of aggregating the collective
recommendations of a disciplinary community so you can gain
an overview about where value might lie.

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Quality Assurance
Blogs, microblogs and social
networks can provide an
informal space where new ideas
and research can be reviewed
and discussed in a way similar
to conventional academic
conferences, but unbounded by
time and place.
How do you filter
quality research?

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Academic Research Cycle
Dissemination of Knowledge
Social media are above all about communication and are
therefore ideal for researchers who wish to make their
research more widely available

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Academic Research Cycle
Dissemination of Knowledge
When considering how best to share your research however, there are a number of
questions that you are likely to want to think about. These include:
 What is the appropriate tone for publication of scholarly ideas via social media?
Do I write as if I were producing a conventional academic article or do I need a
different approach?
 What should I publish and when? Do I wait for things to be published in
academic journals or can I start dissemination earlier?
 Are there intellectual property and copyright implications if I make ideas and
results available using social media?
 Who is my audience? Social media can generally be read by anyone and so it is
possible that your Head of Department, your peers, your research subjects and the
general public may all read what you write.

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Social Networking Tools

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Social Networking Tools

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Social Networking Tools

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Social Networking Tools

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Social Networking Tools

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Social Networking Tools

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Social Networking Tools

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Social Networking Tools
Project Management Tools

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Social Networking Tools
Project Management Tools

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Scholars and Social Media

52. Thank you!
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aalwabil@ksu.edu.sa
@HCI_LAB @_areej