1.
Five Ways to Use Social Media to
Raise Awareness for Your Paper or
Research
Wednesday, 11/16 10:00-11:30am
Sean Ekins, Ph.D., D.Sc.

2.
Listed learning objectives
• Use a social media tool to share your research
• Understand a few methods for sharing research
data freely online
• Develop a strategy for using social media to talk
about your research
• Track engagement with your social media efforts

3.
How many of you use social media?
• Outside of science ?
• For communicating your work?

4.
Science is changing
• Where we do science
• Who does science
• How we fund science
• How we tell the world about our science

5.
Laboratories past and present
Lavoisier’s lab 18th C Edison’s lab 20th C
Author’s lab 21th C
+ Network of
global
collaborators

6.
Crowdsourcing Science
Ekins, Perryman & Andrade PLoS Negl Trop Dis 10(10): e0005023

7.
There are no shortages of people, ideas,
diseases perhaps only money…
Crowdfunding Science

8.
Diversity of needs
• I work on diverse projects (drug discovery, grant
writing etc.)
• Need to make people aware that I am here and
gain visibility for work
• Different networks (neglected disease, rare disease)
• Different audience backgrounds (cheminformatics,
patients, investors)
• Different needs (customers for software vs
customers for consulting, vs VCs for investment)

9.
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Conferences / meetings
Academic networking / profile sites (e.g.…
Conversations with colleagues
Institutional websites / repositories
Email
Social networking sites (e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter,…
Your own blog / website
Subject-based websites / repositories (e.g. arXiv,…
Posts on other blogs / websites
Discussion lists
Multimedia sharing sites (e.g. Slideshare, YouTube)
In which of the following ways do you currently create awareness
of or share materials relating to your work?
(n = 2,826)
“When you see the
CVs of big
academics, they’ve
done all these
things. It wasn’t a
strategy – they just
did them.”

10.
There are lots of social media sites

11.
About.me
 Not sure of utility but it’s a
starting point
 A place to provide links to
your other pages

12.
Even an old 1 page website can help
http://www.collaborations.com/CHEMISTRY.HTM

13.
What is social media for scientists
• Using software to help connect to others
• Providing your science in a consumable accessible
format
• Using software / apps to assess use of your output
• Downloads of papers, views, citations
• What works and what does not in this space
• Marketing vs Social marketing
• Networking for connections

14.
Pros
• Visibility
• Cost
• Global Reach
• Openness
• Enhanced or new collaborations
• Career changing
• Bottom line – people can find you and your work

15.
Cons
• It’s a full time job
• Once in – there is no reason for going back
• Longevity / permanence of information
• Law of unintended consequences
• Frightening for the inexperienced
• Bottom line – there are no free rides, you get out
what you put in

16.
Publishing then and now
Idea
Experiment
Publish
Idea
Experiment
Publish Post preprint online
Post data on figshare
Enrich paper on KudosBlog about paper
Tweet link about it
Post on Linkedin
Discuss on PubMed
Commons
Track usage and Altmetrics
Give talks
Post on
Slideshare
Tweet
Last 5 yrsLast 200 yrs

17.
What am I creating?

18.
Increase in sharing
• We share things now that 10yrs ago we would not
have imagined
- pictures of our meals
- Selfies
- pictures of pets
- minutae of life
• We also share scientific data – and there are
platforms to do this securely or publically

19.
How I got into this
• LinkedIn – my only tool for a
long time
• Then it all exploded with a
paper and I bought an..iPhone
• Lead to ideas for apps
• Antony Williams
• Alex Clark
Williams et al DDT 16:928-939, 2011

20.
How many of you use LinkedIn?

21.
LinkedIN
• Links to Slideshare etc.
• Use to post links to blogs, slides etc.

22.
What it lead to
• Blog
• Wiki’s
• Mobile app development
• Using a whole array of tools
• Twitter
• Slideshare
• Figshare
• Kudos
• Pubmed Commons
• Publishing in F1000Research

23.
My blog
www.collabchem.com
• I document my
science
• Other
interesting
science
• Issues in
publishing

24.
Post on other sites:
How to start a rare disease company

25.
Get a headshot and stick with it!
• Have an image
• Smile
• Look sharp
• Use on Twitter etc.
• It seems narcissistic.. But YOU have BRAND
recognition

26.
How many of you use SlideShare?

27.
SlideShare
 I put all slides on here – if non-confidential

28.
In 1yr my slides had >30,000 views

29.
How many of you use figshare?

30.
www.figshare.com
 I put datasets and posters on here and have done for several years!!

31.
figshare is a repository where users can make all of their
research outputs available in a citable, shareable, and
discoverable manner

32.
what we do
Citable
Shareable
Discoverable

33.
figshare for institutions
•place to manage all institutional research outputs
•upload any file format, previewed in the browser
•integrates with existing infrastructure - makes for an easy,
familiar login
• complies with funder mandates on open data
• increases the discoverability of research content through integrations
• clean, easy-to-navigate interface

34.
uploading your data is quick and easy
• encourages reuse
• helps researchers present data in a
way that can be interpreted by others
• improves exposure
• increases citations
• meets funder mandates around open
data and sustainable hosting
• drives usage to publication

35.
sharing is great, but it’s also about
control over your data

36.
figshare integrations

37.
My Papers are richer with content
and more are Open
• Occasionally I put preprints on figshare as well
• I now like to publish in F1000Research
• Several more PLOS, BMC papers..
• Fewer totally closed papers..
• My profile is increasing I think..
• More followers on Twitter
• Increased citations??
• Get ORCiD and track papers in KUDOS
0000-0002-5691-5790

38.
AAPS supports research using
social media

39.
Facebook

40.
Facebook

41.
Twitter

42.
Twitter

43.
Twitter

44.
AAPS Blog

45.
AAPS Blog

46.
How many of you use Kudos?

47.
https://www.growkudos.com/
• Used to track and enrich papers

48.
Kudos –you help explain your papers
 Takes a lot of effort
 Need to select papers
 Add summary, links etc.

49.
Kudos- tracking metrics vs time

50.
Impact on paper visibility
• Actions can impact views – sharing – adding content

51.
Disconnect between Web of
Science and Kudos

52.
Write articles on using social media
Not a lot of citations
Lots of views and sharing

53.
Altmetric
I am not sure of what it means really – a measure of tweets on paper?

54.
PubMed commons
• A way to comment on work in PubMed and enrich
• Links to blog posts, slides etc

55.
PubMed Commons

56.
How many of you use Twitter?
• Outside of science ?
• For communicating your work?

57.
@collabchem …. on Twitter

58.
It started with a
• Collaborations started
from tweets

59.
And lead to this…

60.
Lead to NIH funding R21 in approx. 2 yrs

61.
Using social media to engage new
customers / collaborators
Michele Rhee MBA
Connected on Twitter
Helped us write paper
GoTo meeting with colleagues managing
collaborations funding science
Introduction
to a
company
We had already
connected
Intro to others
gave me CV
for a postdoc
at Harvard

62.
Need to insert company/product
into social media conversations
• Every
company
needs a
person
engaging,
mining and
connecting

63.
How I leverage Social Media
• Highlight talks
• Papers being published
• Any interesting science from outside own network
• Putting ideas out there
• Try not to overload, keep tone professional,
• (Remember how you would like to be treated).
• Occasional analysis of how papers are used

64.
Google Scholar
• Do not have to do anything once set up
• Useful to check ‘cites’ and do searches, no frills

65.
How to Measure Impact

66.
Are you more than just a metric?
• Are we too focused on measuring too much
• Could become obsessed about these tools and
measurement
• Social media is not likely to help a bad paper or
scientific idea – may actually roast the scientist
• We are missing the big picture –we are doing
science we should be conversing…

67.
REDDIT – continue the conversation

68.
The Highs and Lows
• Highs.. When someone else blogs on our papers, journalist writes about
work
• When a rare disease parent finds you
• When you start a new collaboration via Twitter
• Lows.. When you get people stalking /trolling your science and writing
really nasty things on blogs, Twitter etc. and yet they have done nothing
• Journalists that totally twist your words / waste time
• When you realize that you still have >100 papers to summarize in Kudos
• When you get introduced to a new tool and realize you have to repeat
weeks of work that you have already done elsewhere

69.
Summary
• Multiple levels of tools
• 1 – data sources = Slideshare, figshare, blogs, journals etc.
• 2 – compilers = Google Scholar, Research Gate, Academia,
GrowKudos
• 3 – tools that provide scores of output= altmetric, Research Gate
• There are too many tools you need to use – adds to stress
• Select carefully – many duplicate / overlap in function
• Unclear benefits of some tools – time wasting
• LinkedIn may not be enough

70.
Tools I am not a big fan of
• Poor design
• Unclear whats in it for me
• Spurious results
• But they may be of use to you …..

71.
Research Gate
• Barely use it..a couple of times a year – provide
reprint requests – get many annoying email alerts

72.
Research Gate - Why do I need a
score? What does it mean?

73.
I was late to joining Academia

74.
Academia is a mess
• None of these people were my co-authors??

75.
These are not my co-authors

76.
Just Weird stuff at Academia
• I do not know these authors

77.
Recommendations For You
• Do something:
• If you are a new scientist starting out building your network and
needing visibility
• Because the sooner you start the easier maintenance will be
• Do nothing:
• If you are an older scientist, retired, with no time
• If you really do not want to be visible
• If you cannot face hours setting up, uploading papers, preprints,
summarizing papers etc.

78.
What it has/ Has not lead to:
• Fame and wealth
• Hard to determine if it helped with funding from NIH etc… but I got one grant that started on Twitter…
• Job offers
• Having a webpage / CV alone definitely has lead to consulting jobs
• More free time
• I think maintaining all the tools sucks up free time!! BEWARE OF THIS
• More relaxed
• I am probably less relaxed because I wonder what I am missing or need to improve
• Still opportunities for new tools
• Make it easier on the scientist, integrate more of the functions, show clear benefits of participating

79.
Five Ways to Use Social Media to
Raise Awareness for Your Paper or
Research
• So what are they …At a bare minimum …
• 1. Use LinkedIn to tell people what you are doing..
• 2. Tweet about your work
• 3. Put your slides on Slideshare
• 4. Put your data on Figshare
• 5. Enrich your papers on Kudos

80.
How many of you will now raise
awareness of your work and papers
using social media?

81.
During
the project
On
publication
Ongoing
Put as many outputs
as possible online
Submit for posters
and other speaking
engagements
Build up a network
of people interested
in your work
Connect the final
publication to other
related outputs
Summarize your
work in plain
language
Tell people that you
have published!
Keep the work alive
by connecting it to
new materials
Measure which
communications
were most effective
and do more

82.
Contact
• Sean Ekins, Ph.D., D.Sc.
• Email collaborationspharma@gmail.com
• Phone 215-687-1320
Acknowledgments:
/Figshare Support
@figshare
support.figshare.com
Antony Williams
Mark Hahnel
Charlie Rapple
@growkudos www.growkudos.com

83.
If you liked this topic go check out
these slides on slideshare
www.slideshare.net/AntonyWilliams

84.
Read this..

85.
Postdoc opening
• 2yr funding
• Help coordinate projects, identify new projects and
write grants/ papers
• Pharmaceutical or Chemisty or Biology PhD
• Able to work in US
• Based in Raleigh area NC

86.
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