Abstract: The mission of many business schools and their researchers is to produce research that that impacts how business leaders, entrepreneurs, managers, and innovators, think and act. However, this mission remains an elusive ideal for many business school academics because they struggle to design and produce research capable of overcoming the "research-practice gap." To help those scholars address this gap, we explain why and how they should use social media to be more 'open' to connecting with, learning from, and working with academics and other stakeholders outside of their field. We describe how social media can be used as a boundary-spanning technology to help bridge the research-practice gap. To do this, we present a process model of five research activities: networking, framing, investigating, dissemination, and assessment. Using recently published research as an illustrative example, we describe how social media was used to make each activity more open. We conclude with a framework of different social media-enabled open academic approaches (connector, observer, promoter, and influencer) and some dos and don'ts for engaging in each approach. This paper aims to help business academics rethink and change their practices so that our profession is more widely regarded for how its research positively impacts practice and societal well-being more generally.

1. The open academic:
Why and howbusiness academics should use
social media to be more‘open’ and impactful
Seminarat DeakinBusiness School
2nd June 2022

2. Basedon the article:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2022.05.001

3. Some questions
• Why did you become a business school academic?
– To study and understand business and management.
– To help business and managementbe better via that understanding.
• What drives you now?
– To “get into” in top-tier managementjournals.
• How muchdoes it cost to produce and publish a paper in a top-tier journal?
– Estimated to be US$400,000 in 2014 (Terwiesch & Ulrich, 2014)
• What would happen to society if all the knowledge in top-tier managementjournals in
the last 40 years disappeared?

4. Aim
• To emphasize the value of a “digital presence”
– Not just for dissemination, but for other aspects of the research process.
• Make a case for using social media as a boundary-spanning technology to attain
RRBM Principle 1:
– “developmentof knowledge that benefits business and the broader
society, locallyand globally,for the ultimatepurpose of creating a better
world”
• Social media enable openness involves balancing and evolving four approaches:
– connector, observer, promoter and influencer

5. What is social media
• Socialmedia use“mobileandweb-basedtechnologiesto createhighly interactiveplatformsvia which individualsand
communitiesshare,co-create,discuss,andmodifyuser-generatedcontent”(Kietzmannetal.,2011:241).
User-generated Content Socialmedia honeycomb Socialmedia
platforms

6. Socialmedia for open academic use
Type of social media Open academic use Examples
Mainstreamsocial
media
Blogs Websites for academics to present information
about their research.
Blogger, WordPress, Wix, and Medium
Podcasts Platforms for spoken-word broadcasts where
digital audio files are posted and accessed via
personal playback devices.
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google
Podcasts, Audible, and Stitcher
Comprehensive social
media platforms
Platforms for conversing, sharing content,
revealing whereyouare, establishing
relationships, developing reputations and
forming groups.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,LinkedIn,
Reddit, and Instagram

7. Socialmedia for open academic use
Type of social media Open academic use Examples
Academicoriented
social media
Pre-printservers Repositories for posting early versions of
researchwork that has not yetbeen accepted for
publication by an academic journal
National Bureauof Economic Research | (NBER),
Social Science ResearchNetwork (SSRN), and
EconPapers
Scholarly collaboration
networks
Platforms whereacademics can interact,
develop collaborations, and share research
results.
Academia.edu, Researchgate, CiteULike,Mendeley
and Figshare
Academic oriented news
platforms
Online media where academics publish news
stories and opinion pieces on ordrawing on
research.
Conversation, Medium and PsyPost
Identity and impact assessment
tools
Digital tools for searching and identifying
published academic workand assessing its
influencewithin and beyond academia.
Orcid, Google Scholar, Scopus, Altmetric, Microsoft
Academic, PubMed, PlumX, Paperbuzz and Impact
Story

8. Why usesocial media forresearch?

9. Why use social media to be more open?
• To avoid the pitfalls of excessive closedness.
– “We are trained and rewarded by academics in our field,to
develop and publish research in journals in our field, so to
impact academics in our field” (McCarthy & Bogers, 2022)
• Academic openness involves “leveraginginsights and expertise
from differentacademic and non-academic stakeholders toco-
design, co-produce, and co-assess research that advances
academic inquiry and its impact” (McCarthy & Bogers, 2022)
– Not about sacrificing rigor for relevance
(Stokes,2011).

10. How to use social media to be more open and impactful?
Networking
Seeking andinteracting with
others toexchange
information for research
purposes.
Framing
Exploring,formulating and
choosing aresearch problem.
Investigating
Determining the research
setting, data and methods.
Disseminating
Communicating research
progress andfindings to
targetaudiences.
Assessing
Considering the implications
ofresearch forsociety.
“Social media canbe used notjust for disseminating,but alsofor the networking,
framing,investigatingand assessing aspects of research” (McCarthy & Boger, 2022)

11. Networking Management
researchers on
bullshit
Business leaders
andjournalists on
bullshit
Psychology
researchers on
bullshit
• Social media are changing how we network.
• If you have no online network you can’t use
social media to frame,investigate,
disseminate and assess.
• Networks are central to boundary-spanning.
• More diverse and digestible insights about:
– Rethink why something matters.
– And how to understand it in useful ways.
Information
researchers on
bullshit

12. Framing: within andacross academia
• Leverages network connections to explore,
formulate, and select research ideas and problems
to be studied.
– Filtering
– Combining
– Sensemaking
• Ideas for impactful research often come not from
gaps in the research literature, but from conversing
with practicing managersand scrutiny of the media
(Fisher, 2022)

13. Framing:beyond academia

14. Investigating
• Socialmedia canbea sourceofdata.
• Twitter’s‘academicresearchproducttrack’:
– real-timeandhistoricalpublic datawithadditional
features
– 10million Tweets/ month
– Queryrules(1024characters,1000streaming rules)
– Technical support
– Nocost
• Testing platformforscalesandsurveys
• Callsforinput.

15. Investigating

16. Disseminating
• Disseminationis what we do to share and spread our
research online.
– Dissemination results in attention.
• Attention is the extent to which what we have posted
online is seen, liked, re-shared, and discussed online.
– From attention can come impact.
• Impact is the extent research is cited and used to
change how people think and act.
• Acceptance Stage
– Update, celebration and notification
– Pre-prints
• Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Stage
Paper with
DOI
Slides
Blog posts and
videos
Talks and interviews

17. Disseminating
Socialmedia?Get serious!Understandingthe functionalbuildingblocksof social
media(98,827 views)

18. Disseminating

19. Disseminatingand attentiontimelines
https://www.altmetric.com/

20. Assessing
AResearch Outputon the
Web
• Datasets
• Clinical trials
• Journalsarticles
• Booksandchapters
• Whitepapers,blogs,and
presentations
Persistent Identifiers (PIDs)
• DOIs
• PubMed IDs
• ISBNs
• arXivIDs
• ADSIDs
• SSRNIDs
• RePECIDs
• URLs
Mentions in tracked
source
• Newsmedia
• Socialmedia
• Wikipedia
• Blogs
• Policydocuments
• Mendeley
• Syllabi
• Patents

21. Assessing: Altmetric
• About40%articlesreceive no Altmetric
attention.
• AltmetricAttentionscores arenot
equivalent toquality.
• Academic attention:ScopusandGoogle
Scholar,andcites andH-index.

22. Assessing:policy

23. Assessing:patents

24. Assessing: practice

25. Approaches to social media enabledacademic openness
Typeof social media use and
the level academicopenness
pursuit
Passive &
limited
Active &full
Approaches
Observer
Passively follows,monitors and
collects andcurates content
related totheir research. An
academic 'wallflower' that rarely
engages beyond liking and
sharing.
Connector
Connects, follows,and
consorts with those
related totheir research.
Collects friends,
followers andcontacts.
Promoter
Promotes themselves, their
research, and their institutions.
Seeks tomake a difference to
themselves andtheir academic
communities.
Influencer
Actively advocates,
educates andpersuades to
make a difference totheir
field andsociety.

26. Some dos
Observer
• Consider how andwhyyou follow.
• Determine what you want tolearn
about them andfromthem.
• Like andreshare content that fits your
research andcareer strategy.
Connector
• Consider who toconnect with and what
sort of relationship toexpect.
• Consider if you areconnecting for
personal and/or strategic reasons.
• Identify andjoin research relevant 'lists'
and'groups'.
Promoter.
• Know youraudiences, the channels and
the hashtags to engage with them.
• Follow andadd toconversations about
the issues tohelp buildawareness of
you andyourresearch.
• Consider the sequence andtiming of
promotions: Twitter, SlideShare, blogs,
video explainers, etc.
• Offer open access options toyour
research.
Influencer
• Take apublic position on your
research andhold trueto your
contributions.
• Determine whoyou want to
influence andthe outcome you
want.
• Use compelling images, videos and
captions forthe platform andthe
desired audience outcome.
• Track andassess engagement-
outcome effectiveness

27. Some don’ts
Observer
• Forget the social in social media andbe
tooghost like.
• Like andreshare content you can't
explain why you did so.
• Underestimate the limitations of not
actively sharing and being helpful.
Connector
• Expect anetwork tobuild itself.
• Excessively andindiscriminately
connect (anddisconnect).
• Be afraidtoventure outside yourfield.
Promoter.
• Replace human engagement, with robot
like automated interactions.
• Forget totranslate your contributions to
suit different social media and
audiences.
• Neglect rigour,integrity andnuance in
favourof sensationalism, exaggeration
&hyperbole.
• Assume online audiences aremerely
passive consumers ofknowledge.
• Don’t drinkandpost.
Influencer
• Be tricked intothinking you know
morethan you do.
• Engage with and confront trolls.
• Ignore who your audience is and
how they relate toyour impact
goals.
• Forget tomake your contributions
meaningful.
• Forget toexperiment andlearn
what works andwhat doesn’t.

28. The dark side of social media enabled openness
• Time drain
– Have disciplined,goal-directed,time andattentionmanagementfor
boundaryspanning
• Academicnarcissism
– KardashianIndex (i.e., the K-Index)
– Socialmedia canincreasethe impactofmediocreandhighly flawedresearch
– Waryofhumblebragging andhumanpeacocking
• Uninhibited backlashes
– Trolling andbullying
• Mission-reward misalignment
– Does yourinstitutionandfield “really”value openness andimpact?

29. Summary
• Social media are boundary-spanning technologies to help us:
– be more open at networking, framing, investigating, disseminating, and
assessing with our research
– complement the elements of closed research that are vital for being
rigorous.
– Help researchers and their research to be more engaged and impactful.

30. Twitter: @Toffeemen68
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianmccarthy1/
YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/c/IanMcCarthy
Slideshare: https://www.slideshare.net/IanMcCarthy
Email:ian_mccarthy@sfu.ca
Personal website: http://itdependsblog.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @Bogers
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bogers/
YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/user/drmbogers
Slideshare: https://www.slideshare.net/MarcelBogers
Email:m.l.a.m.bogers@tue.nl
Personal website: http://www.marcelbogers.com
We are‘open’ to connectingwithandhearing from you