The survey collected responses from 339 participants about their use of social media for science communication. Most (70%) respondents had science-related jobs. The survey found that Twitter was the primary way participants learned about the survey (65%) and the social media platform seen as providing the best science information (65%). Respondents highly rated their interest in science (average 6.58/7) and social networking (5.36/7) for keeping up with science. The most rewarding aspects of science and social media were found to be accessing new information and connecting with people, while information overload and lack of time were the most frustrating challenges.

1. ScienceOnline 2011 Scientist Survey Conducted by Arikia Millikan, Dave Mosher, Taylor Dobbs for the “Web 2.0wned: Harnessing New Media to Enhance Your Science Communication Power” Session at ScienceOnline2011, January 15 Collated by Mary Canady Data available at http://bit.ly/surveyscio11 Preso available at http://comprendia.com/surveyscio11

2. Summary of Results p. 1 Arikia Millikan, Dave Mosher, and Taylor Dobbs conducted an online survey for the “Web 2.0wned: Harnessing New Media to Enhance Your Science Communication Power” Session at ScienceOnline2011, held January 15th in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The survey was distributed using social media, taking advantage of the surveyors’ social networks and online science thought leaders. There were 339 survey participants, who were asked about their occupation (Slide 4), with 70% responding that they have a job related to science. For some of the survey analyses, the 30% not working in science were removed, with results for all participants shown in purple and those working in science in blue. Geographical demographics were not collected, and it should be noted that these results will be biased towards greater social media utilization due to the way the survey was distributed. It can be assumed that the demographics are similar to the attendees of the ScienceOnline conference, which comprised different scientific disciplines predominantly from the US. The survey utilized various social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook, including funny “LOLcats” type images in which online science thought leader’s faces were placed on animal bodies. Slide 5 shows that 93% of the respondents were not led to the survey via these images, and that 59% of them found out about the survey directly from one of the thought leaders. Twitter was the leading way respondents heard about the survey (Slide 6), with 65% indicating that they heard about it via the application, and 33% heard about it from Facebook. Respondents were then asked about their interest in science and social networking (Slide 7) on a scale from 1 to 7, and we report results of ‘all participants’ and ‘science only’ according to the answers represented in Slide 4. When asked about their interest in science, the average ranking was 6.58 (all participants) and 6.73 (science only). Results for respondents’ interest in social networking averaged 5.36 (all participants) and 5.48 (science only). Finally, average result for the importance of social networking in keeping up with science is 5.17 (all participants) and 5.24 (science only).

3. Summary of Results p. 2 When asked which social networking services they used (Slide 8), the ‘science only’ group top results were Facebook (95%), Twitter (82%), and LinkedIn (63%), with the ‘all participants’ results being similar within 5%, with the ‘science only’ crowd being more apt to use social networking. Interestingly, when asked which services gives the best information about science (Slide 9), Twitter beat out Facebook more than 5-fold for the ‘science only’ group, with 65% choosing Twitter and only 12% choosing Facebook. Slide 10 shows a word cloud of the essay answers for the question about the most rewarding aspect of science-meets social networking, with the size of the word directly correlated with the number of times respondents used it. We used all participants’ answers to create the diagram, and we thought the following words were indicative of the sentiment, in addition to the two largest words ‘science’ and ‘people’: interesting, information, stories, otherwise, meeting, new. Slide 11 shows the same type of diagram for the question regarding the most frustrating aspect of science-meets-social networking for all of the participants. Intriguingly, ‘science’ and ‘people’ are also the most prominent words, and other words of interest are: time, much, and noise. Executive Summary This survey, while perhaps not as rigorous in terms of demographics and with the biases that exist due to its distribution, has a very reasonable sample size and several important messages for life science companies. Slide 5 shows the importance of thought leaders in disseminating messages to life scientists, as 59% of the 339 respondents found out about the survey from them. Images did little to improve the propagation of the message, and text-based Twitter (Slide 6) was the most powerful tool, with 65% receiving the message from the application. Slide 7 shows incredible interest among these scientists in social networking and its utilization for keeping up with science, but it should be noted again that the sample is biased. Slide 8 shows the pervasiveness of the utilization of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, with complementary data in Slide 9 that Twitter is considered much more important for receiving information about science. Finally, Slides 10 and 11show that scientists are interested in getting new information from social networking, and that information overload can be a problem.

4. What do you do for a job? *For several questions, results will be shown with these participants removed (blue) & full (purple)

5. Survey Promotion: What Worked? Did any of these people bring this survey to your attention? Did you see any promotional images for this survey?

6. How did you get here?

7. Rate Interest & Importance 1-7

8. Which social networking services are you signed up with?

9. Which service gives you the best information about science?

10. What’s the most REWARDING aspect of science-meets-social networking?

11. What's the most FRUSTRATING aspect of science-meets-social networking?