1) Social media can significantly increase the visibility, downloads, and citations of research publications and other work. Sharing publications and research on social media platforms like Twitter can lead to more than 10 times the downloads compared to works not shared online. 2) The number of citations a researcher receives is impacted by their social media presence. One researcher found growth in their own citations correlated with increased social media use. Metrics like the h-index are also influenced by social visibility and are being used more in evaluating researchers. 3) Researchers are encouraged to create profiles on social media platforms for academics to raise their visibility and credibility. Sharing work and building an online community can multiply the impacts on downloads, citations, and career advancement

1. Social media
impact after publishing
D.Sc. Jari Jussila
Principal Research Scientist
@HamkSmart @HAMK_UAS
1

2. Personal experiences on
social media
• Active on social media since 2009
• Dissertation on social media 2015
• TUT Highest Social Authority Score 2016
• Editor Twitter viestintänä – Ilmiöt ja verkostot 2018
2
https://twitter.com/jjussila
@jjussila
@HamkSmart
@Moodmetric
@tviittikirja
@SomeTutkijalle

3. Unscientific formula for
science communication
3
Quality
of Publication
Availability
of Publication,
Research Data,
Source Code
x x
Visibility
of Publication,
Presentation,
Social Media
Posts, Web
page, Blogs,
Vlogs, etc.
= IMPACT
Time
Required
People
Involved

4. Digital Humanities professor
Terras on social media
12.10.2018 4
• Guess when I tweeted my
papers? Top ten
downloaded papers from my
department in the last year,
7 of which include me in the
author list.
• The papers that were
tweeted and blogged had at
least more than 11 times the
number of downloads than
their sibling paper which
was left to its own devices in
the institutional repository.
Source: http://melissaterras.blogspot.fi/2012/04/is-blogging-and-tweeting-about-research.html

5. Citations follow downloads
5
23 112
426
1214 1245
2278
23 135
561
1775
3020
5298
ARTICLE 6
(2014)
ARTICLE 5
(2013)
ARTICLE 4
(2012)
ARTICLE 3
(2011)
ARTICLE 2
(2011)
ARTICLE 1
(2010)
ACM article downloads
Downloads Cumulative
0
2
8
11 12
32
0
2
10
21
33
65
ARTICLE 6
(2014)
ARTICLE 5
(2013)
ARTICLE 4
(2012)
ARTICLE 3
(2011)
ARTICLE 2
(2011)
ARTICLE 1
(2010)
ACM article citations
Citations Cumulative citations
Source: Personal ACM data

6. Social media can help you achieve
a significant increase in visibility
and citations
6
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
5 7
16
20
67
Citations Cumulative
citations

7. Comparison of Cites/year to
TUT colleagues
7
Source: Publish or Perish. Available from https://harzing.com/resources/publish-
or-perish. Accessed 11.10.2018
Personal experience: the growth in number of citations is impacted by
social media
Professors
from same
Lab
Professor 1
Professor 2
Professor 3
Professor 4

8. Comparison of Cites/year to
tenure track candidates
8
Assistant
Professor
Tenure Track
Candidates
Professor 1
Professor 2
Professor 3
Professor 4
Candidate 2
Candidate 1

9. Index for ranking
achievement of researchers
• Hirsch found that the h-index is slightly more accurate than the
number of citations, and substantially better than the number of
publications (productivity) and mean number of citations.
• The h-index does seem to be able to identify good scientists, and it
is becoming widely used informally, for example to rank applicants
for research posts
• People in various disciplines are using or considering using the h-
index as one of the criteria both for appointments and for grants
allocation”, says Hirsch. “I have seen several job applicants send us
their h-index in their CV.”
• Schreiber agrees that “the use of the h-index is increasing, at least
unofficially.” Whether you like it or not, he says, “the h-index is here
to stay”.
9
Source: Ball 2007. Achievement index climbs the rank. Nature, Vol. 448, August 2007.

10. What to do? Some easy wins
• Creating profiles in social networks for
academics will increase your visibility,
citations and credibility as a scholar
• Sharing what you have done on social media,
will significantly increase visibility and
downloads of your articles, which lead to
more citations, collaboration, etc.
• Building your own scientific community will
multiply the above
10

11. Social networks for
academics
11
• A paper in a median impact factor journal uploaded to Academia.edu receives 16%
more citations after one year than a similar article not available online, 51%
more citations after three years, and 69% after five years.
• Articles posted to Academia.edu had 58% more citations than articles only posted
to other online venues, such as personal and departmental home pages, after five
years.
Source: Niyazov et al. 2016
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0148257

12. Experiment – and see the
results
12
A tweet about a conference presentation one day before the conference

13. Tweet a conference
presentation experiment
13
72 views during conference day Source: https://www.slideshare.net/jjussila

14. Blog post and Twitter share
experiment
14
100 downloads a month
Source: https://zenodo.org/record/1319706#.W7_JC1JoSu4
https://tutcris.tut.fi/portal/en/publications/the-reform-of-vocational-education-and-training-in-finland-
insights-from-twitter(9cefdf3b-8990-4f25-9a2c-ecab2254ea44).html
1 tweet 61 more views

15. Build your community
12.10.2018 15Source: https://analytics.twitter.com/

16. And see your impact grow
12.10.2018 16
Source: https://scholar.google.fi/citations?user=xXXTAMsAAAAJ&hl=en
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