The document discusses using social media to enhance research activities. It provides an overview of a presentation on this topic, including examples of social media tools that can benefit researchers such as Twitter, Lanyrd, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Slideshare, blogs, and LinkedIn. The presentation discusses how these tools can help with networking, raising awareness of research outputs, and gathering evidence of the benefits of using social media.

1. Twitter hashtag: #daad2013
Using Social Media to Enhance
Your Research Activities
Brian Kelly
Contact Details
Innovation Advocate
Cetis
University of Bolton
Bolton, UK
Email: ukwebfocus@gmail.com
Twitter: @briankelly
Cetis Web site: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/
Blog: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
Slides and further information available at
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/daad-conference-2013/
See licence details
1

2. Social Media: Tools for Busy Researchers!
Social media:
• Isn‟t (never was) just for young people
• Can help in developing one‟s professional network
• Can help in raising awareness of one‟s research outputs
In this session I will:
• Give examples of social media for researchers
• Provide evidence of the benefits
• Listen to and respond to concerns
2

3. Introduction
About Me
Brian Kelly:
• Innovation Advocate at Cetis, a national Centre for
Educational Technology, Interoperability and Standards
• Formerly UK Web Focus at UKOLN from 1996 - Jul 2013
• Prolific blogger (1,200+ posts since Nov 2006)
• User of various devices to support professional (and
social) activities
• Prolific speaker (400+ talks since 1996)
Research profile:
• Peer-reviewed papers published on Web
accessibility, standards, preservation, …
• Largest no. of downloaded papers from Bath repository
• Highly-cited papers in Web accessibility (e.g. W4A)
3

4. Introduction
About You
In small groups:
• Introduce yourself and say:
 Who your are and where you study
 What your research interests are
 What you hope to gain from the session
• Share with everyone:
 What you hope to gain from the session
 Any interesting or surprising facts you learnt
about other participants
4

5. Introduction
What Do You (Collectively) Do?
Exercise:
• In a few bullet points summarise what you do.
• What do you do which is similar to researchers in
other disciplines?
5

6. Introduction
What You (Collectively) Do
I think you (as a researcher):
• Talk to colleagues and exchange ideas
• Go to conferences, listen to speakers and discuss
their ideas with them and with your peers
• Have an idea for a paper, a project, … and discuss
it with potential co-authors & collaborators
• Write the paper, project proposals or submission
jointly with others
• Listen to and ask questions of the stakeholders
• Do the work with project partners & collaborators
• Ensure that the work is known about by
 Your peers (they may cite you)
 Others, including general public, in order to
enhance the impact of your work
6

7. Introduction
What You (Collectively) Do
I think you (as a researcher):
• Talk to colleagues and exchange ideas
• Go to conferences, listen theory of knowledge discuss
Social constructivism is a sociologicalto speakers and that applies
the general philosophical constructivismwithsocial settings, wherein
their ideas with them and into your peers
groups construct knowledge for one another, collaboratively
• Have an culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings.
creating a small idea for a paper, a project, … and discuss
it with potential co-authors this sort, one is learning all the
When one is immersed within a culture of& collaborators
time about how to paper, project proposals or submission
• Write the be a part of that culture on many levels. Its origins are
largely attributed to Lev Vygotsky.
jointly with others
• Listen to and ask questions of the stakeholders
Social constructivism, Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructivism
• Do the work with project partners & collaborators
• Ensure that the work is known about by
 Your peers (they may cite you)
 Others, including general public, in order to
enhance the impact of your work
7

8. Introduction
What Can Help These Processes?
These areas of work can be supported:
In established ways:
• Events, such as conferences
• Swapping business cards at conferences
• Email, letters and memos!
•…
In new ways:
• Use of social media
• Embracing open (educational) practices
• Participating in „amplified events‟
• Blog posts, status updates and tweets!
• Using „interactive business cards‟
•…
8

9. Introduction
About This Session
Draft timetable:
• Introduction
• The Relevance of Social Media for Researchers
• Key Services:
Twitter
Twitter environment
Lanyrd
Researcher profiling services (ResearchGate, Academia, …)
Slideshare
Blogs
LinkedIn
What else?
•
•
•
•
•
Evidence of Benefits
How Does it Work?
Concerns, Risks and Limitations
What Next?
Open Discussion
9

10. Introduction
About The Session Rules
During this session:
• Feel free to ask questions, make
contributions, etc. at any point!
• Put your mobile phones on silent mode
• Feel free to tweet, use the Web, Google stuff, …
• Feel free to share
ideas, thoughts, observations, etc. openly.
• But respect others‟ privacy
By working collaboratively, the learning during the session should be enhanced
and the session should be more effective than one in which you were all „silos‟.
10

11. Idea from Cameron Neylon
You are free to:
Risk management:
I reserve the right to change my
mind at the end of the session!
copy, share, adapt, or re-mix;
photograph, film, or broadcast;
blog, live-blog, or post video of
this presentation provided that:
You attribute the work to its author and respect the rights and
licences associated with its components.
11
Slide Concept by Cameron Neylon, who has waived all copyright and related or neighbouring rights. This slide only CCZero.
Social Media Icons adapted with permission from originals by Christopher Ross. Original images are available under GPL at:
11
http://www.thisismyurl.com/free-downloads/15-free-speech-bubble-icons-for-popular-websites

12. The LSE Impact of
Social Sciences blog
What Do You Know About?
LSE Impact blog
RSS feeds & RSS readers
Sharing using social
media (Twitter & Facebook)
Twitter metrics / alt.metrics
Creative Commons
licences
Open Access research
publications
Use of Twitter
Twitter hashtags
How a tweet ….
can lead to a peerreviewed paper!
12

13. New Scholarship
About the paper:
$25!
Google Scholar
Sharing services
“That one Tweet got me thinking about
the kinds of sessions I would like to see
and the things sociologists should be
studying”
“so I wrote a blog post about it. As I
usually do now, I shared that blog post
via Twitter.”
“I did a series of blog posts that
expanded on initial post.”
“I combined all of the blog posts into one
paper and thought about what my
critique of the field might be.”
“paper went into an extended peer
review process .. and appeared in 2012”
“Except for the very end of this
process – submitting the paper to the
journal for peer-review – none of this
way of working bares the least bit of
resemblance to how I was trained to
be a scholar.”
13

14. Introduction
What’s It Mean For You?
We‟ve seen:
• Blogs • Twitter • Hashtags • alt.metrics
• RSS • Social sharing
• Google Scholar
• Open Access
• Creative Commons
How could you use these yourself?
• Write a brief summary of how
you could use one of these examples
(or other social media services)
• Share your example with a neighbour
• Put your example on a notice board. We will all
discuss a few examples
14

15. Examples
What Can Twitter Offer?
Twitter:
• A waste of time for those with time to waste!
• A valuable communications & dissemination channel
Twitter can be regarded as:
• An interactive business card:
“Here’s my business card” vs “Here’s my Twitter ID”
• The bar where everybody knows your name:
“Feeling a bit down about my PhD #phdchat”
• An essential tool for conferences:
“On my way to #daad2013. Who else is going?”
• An emergency hotline:
“Arrived at Egham station. No taxis. Help!”
15

16. The Conference Twitter Hashtag
Twitter is useful at events
when an event hashtag is
used (e.g. #daad2013)
• Anyone can use a
hashtag in their tweets
• Best if organisers
announce hashtag
• Enables relevant tweets
to be searched and
aggregated
• Many Twitter archiving
tools (e.g. Twubs)
• Note difference between
Twitter ID (e.g.
@daadlondon) and
hashtag (#daad2013)
16

17. When Twitter At Conferences Takes Off
Twitter use is wellestablished at the ILI
(Internet Librarian
International) conference
Sharing images provides
visual memories of event
Numbers of Twitterers has
reached critical mass
“Wow” – spotting what
people found interesting
Shared memories
Sharing across different
languages
17

18. Using Twitter: Tweetdeck
All tweets (from
the 1,400
people I follow)
Tweets to me
Current conference (or about me)
hashtag I‟m
interested in
Interactions (e.g.
new followers,
favourited and
retweeted tweets)
Tweets from a
group I created
Tweets from
another group I
created
18

19. Examples
Curating Tweeted Links: RebelMouse
RebelMouse:
• Automatically curates
visual summary of
tweeted links
• Can create pages based
on preferred hashtags
See
https://www.rebelmouse.com/
briankelly/
19

20. Using Storify
Storify:
• Manual curation of
tweets
Useful for:
• Archiving tweets about
one‟s own talks,
workshop sessions, …
(Archive of realtime user
feedback, areas of
interest and concerns)
• Preparation of
conference reports,
based on collective
insights
20

21. Is Wikipedia session relevant?
Using Storify
Storify:
• Manual curation of
tweets
Useful for:
• Archiving tweets about
one‟s own talks,
workshop sessions, …
(Archive of realtime user
feedback, areas of
interest and concerns)
• Preparation of
conference reports,
based on collective
insights
21

22. Did users find session useful?
Using Storify
Did users find Twitter useful?
Storify:
• Manual curation of
tweets
Useful for:
• Archiving tweets about
one‟s own talks,
workshop sessions, …
(Archive of realtime user
feedback, areas of
interest and concerns)
• Preparation of
conference reports,
based on collective
insights
22

23. Tweetchats
Tweetchats:
• Focussed Twitter
discussion
• #phdchat
Tweetchats take
place on
Wednesdays
from 19.3020.30
See blog post on “#uklibchat, #ECRchat,
#PhDchat, #Socialchat and Other Tweetchats”
23

24. Tweetchats
Tweetchats:
• Focussed Twitter
discussion
• #phdchat
Tweetchats take
place on
Wednesdays
from 19.3020.30
See blog post on
“#uklibchat, #ECRchat, #PhDchat, #Socialcha
• Look at the
archives to see
what you
missed.
24

25. Lanyrd
Lanyrd: your online
presence at events
Lanyrd:
• Can provide a
speaker profile
• See who else
attends events
you speak at /
attend
• Authentication
by Twitter
25

26. Lanyrd
Lanyrd:
• Could provide
an event‟s web
site
26

27. Lanyrd
Lanyrd:
• Could provide
an event‟s web
site (provides
social aspects)
• Slides hosted
on Slideshare
can be
embedded
• Note
encouragement
to use Twitter
event hashtag
27

28. Observing Patterns of Use
Tools such as SocialBro
provide an understanding
of how Twitter is used
• Most follow >100
• Most tweet daily
• Most tweet 2-5
times/day
28

29. Observing Patterns of Use
Crowdbooster is a
Web-based Twitter
analytics tool
Note this is the „potential‟ no. of impressions. Reality will be
much less!
29

30. Examples
Researcher Profiling Services
Relevance for you:
• You‟re a researcher: shouldn‟t your research
interests and outputs be freely available?
• You‟re a young researcher: shouldn‟t this information
be decoupled from your (current) institution?
• You want your information to be easily found:
shouldn‟t you use a global service with high Google
visibility?
Relevant services:
• ResearchGate
• Academia.edu
• (ORCID)
30

31. Paper
Paper presented at
Social Media in
Social Research
2013 Conference)
available from:
• Opus, University
of Bath IR
• ResearchGate
• Academia.edu
Share with your friends
and provide real-time peerreviewing:
31
http://bit.ly/sra13-kelly
(and I can see real-time
stats using + suffix)

32. Examples
Institutional Repository
• xxx
My (former) institutional repository:
• Hosts copies of my papers
• No longer able to maintain information
• Concern that after I left, my records
may disappear
32

33. Academia.edu
Academia.edu:
• Initially used
to provide a
list of my
papers
(which I
could
maintain)
• Then
uploaded
open access
versions of
papers
33

34. Academia.edu
Alerts provided:
• How people
found my
papers
• Peers who
have started
following me
• Can manage
alerts
34

35. Examples
ResearchGate
ResearchGate:
• Initially used to
provide a list of
my papers (which
I could maintain)
• Then uploaded
open access
versions of
papers which I
can maintain e.g.
embed ORCID ID
35

36. Examples
Orcid
Orcid:
• International
standard for
researcher ID
• Aims to save
time and
simplify work
flows
• Takes 30
seconds to
create!
• See orcid.org
• Get one!
• You can then
add your
publications
36

37. Slideshare
Slideshare:
• Boring repository
of slides?
• Simple &
effective way of
raising visibility of
conference
resources?
37

38. Slideshare
Note how:
• Usage statistics are
available
• Slides can be embedded
in other web sites
38

39. Slideshare
Note how:
• Usage statistics are
available
• Slides can be embedded
in other web sites
• „Liking‟ and commenting
are available
39

40. Slideshare
Who liked and downloaded my recent
slidedeck?
• Associate professor from Moscow
• Interests in open education & open data
• Has an About.me profile
Read her blog. Looked at her slides, …
Possible collaborator?
40

41. Examples
UK Web Focus Blog
UK Web Focus blog:
• 1,400+ posts
since Nov 2006
• My open notebook
• Comments
encouraged
• “It works for me”
41

42. LinkedIn
LinkedIn:
• Your online CV
– and more
42

43. LinkedIn
LinkedIn:
• Your online CV
– and more
Can include
details of:
• Project
activities
• Publications
43

44. LinkedIn
Note that
LinkedIn profiles:
• Tend to be
easily found
using Google
• Can be
maintained by
you (unlike
institutional
profile)
NB note risk of empty profile
44

45. Content Syndication
New slides added to Slideshare
automatically appear in
LinkedIn activity stream
New blog posts automatically
appear in LinkedIn activity
stream
Content posted in one
environment can be
syndicated to others,
such as LinkedIn:
• No need to manually
create content in all
social networks
• „Likes‟, comments
and „shares‟ can be
sent by email
45

46. Content Syndication
New blog posts automatically
appear in Facebook status
update stream
46

47. Evidence
Importance of Evidence
How might we gather evidence of the value of use of
social media for researchers?
• Provide some examples of approaches
Four examples of evidence of benefits of use of social
media:
1. As part of the research process
2. For identifying and making contact with new
collaborators
3. To raise the visibility of research
4. Looking at the numbers
47

48. Evidence 1: Role in the Research Process
LSE Impact blog
From post on the
LSE Impact of Social
Sciences blog:
• Evidence of how
a tweet led to a
series of blog
posts which
became a peerreviewed article
• Evidence of how
the blog post
about this
become popular
48

49. Evidence 2: Making New Connections
Developing New Connections
• Tweet sent asking for researchers to complete
survey on use of Web 2.0 in research
• Response from @slewth
• Who is she?
• Twitter bio: disability researcher
• Link in bio to her blog
• Blog gives insights which complement my
research
• Follow @slewth and have Twitter chat
Follow-up
• Shall we write a paper?
• Paper written
• Paper accepted
• Paper wins prize for best paper 
• Sarah later told me she knew of my research
See blog posts on “It Started With A Tweet”
and “Winner of John M Slatin Award at W4A 2010”
49

50. Evidence 3: Raising Visibility
Blog post by Melissa
Terras, 19 April 2012
The findings
50

51. Evidence 4: Looking at the Numbers
What do
download
statistics
tell us?
Download figures
for my papers
51
12 Dec 2013

52. Least Downloaded Papers
Will papers in a
repository be
seldom seen?
52
What can be
learn from
approaches
taken for the
popular and
unpopular
papers?

53. How Does It Work?
“It’s About Nodes and Connections”
Cameron Neylon keynote at OR 2012:
“Networks qualitatively change our
capacity”
• With only 20% of a community connected
only limited interaction can take place
• This increases drastically as numbers of
connected nodes grows
Examples:
• Phone networks (no use with only 1 user!)
• Tweeting at this event
• Galaxy Zoo
“Filters block. Filters cause
friction”
Need for client-side, not
supply-side filters.
53

54. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Web sites
Real
world
Databases
(e.g. IRs)
Directories
Google
(Bing,
DuckDuckGo,
…)
Summary of key approaches:
• Apply various techniques to Web
resources to make resources easier to
find in Google, …
• Resources may include organisational
Web suites, third party Web
sites, databases, …
54

55. Beyond SEO, SMO
Web sites
Databases
(e.g. IRs)
Real
world
Directories
55
Social Services
(Facebook,
Slideshare,
Twitter, …)
Summary of key approaches:
• Make use of social networking
services which people may use of
discuss your services
• Services may include Facebook,
LinkedIn, Slideshare, Twitter, …

56. Risks
Risks, Limitations, Concerns
Over to you:
• What concerns do you have?
• What risks do you envisage?
• What limitations might social media have
for your in your area of research?
56

57. Risks
“It Doesn’t Work in Humanities”
“They1 found, for example, that science researchers
… are more likely to use Twitter, while mathematicians
and computer scientists are more predisposed to archive
their own material, and, like classicists, to disseminate
their research outputs themselves. Social scientists
on the other hand are more reluctant to use new
technologies, for example they are less likely to Tweet
or use a laptop at a conference.”
1 Connaway and Dickey, 2009. Quoted in Re-Skilling For
Research, RLUK Report, http://www.rluk.ac.uk/content/
re-skilling-research
57

58. Risks
“It Doesn’t Work For Me!”
The Social Web and the Belbin Model, UK Web Focus blog, 27 May 2009
Thoughts:
• It‟s fine not to be
good at
everything!
• But what if you
don‟t like speaking
in public?
• Perhaps there‟s a
need for a social
media role in
research team
• Avoid deprecating
social media just
cos you don‟t like
it!
58

59. Risks
The Service May Not Be Sustainable
But what if:
• Facebook goes out of business?
• Google withdraws („sunsets‟) its services
• Slideshare is taken over and changes its terms &
conditions and operational practices?
But also need to consider:
• ICL is taken over by Fujitsu
• IBM sells it PC division & stops making computers
• You developed departmental systems based on
dBase III
• UMIST merges with Manchester University
• …
59

60. Risks
A Risk Management Approach
But what about:
•
•
•
•
•
See Empowering users and their
institutions: A risks and opportunities
framework for exploiting the potential of
the social web, Kelly & Oppenheim, 2009
Legal, ethical & privacy concerns
My boss doesn‟t approve; my institution doesn‟t approve
It doesn‟t work in my discipline
It doesn‟t work for me
I‟m worried GooFace isn‟t sustainable; is evil.
Risks and opportunities framework:
• It‟s not about „social media‟ it‟s about „social
media for a particular purpose‟
• Be clear of potential benefits & associated risks
• Remember the risks of not doing things
• There will be costs (but may be small)
• Adopt risk minimisation strategies
• Base decisions on evidence
• Be aware of biases and subjective factors
60

61. Next Steps
What Next?
From the Hyperlinked Library MOOC, develop:
• A plan for your Online Professional Learning Network:
 Goals; scope; resources and maintenance plan
 See http://hyperlinkedlibrarymoocbriankelly.wordpress.com/
2013/11/06/assignment-4-my-online-professional-learning-network/
• An action brief:
 Convince ______ that by _______ they will
________ which will ________ because _______.
 Complemented by a risk assessment
 See http://hyperlinkedlibrarymoocbriankelly.wordpress.com/
2013/11/20/assignment-6-the-directors-brief-library-use-of-wikipediaand-other-wikimedia-projects/
61

62. Conclusions: Top 10 Tips
1
2
3
4
5
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Be pro-active
Monitor what works for you
Don‟t forget the links
Don‟t forget the Google juice
Develop your network
Encourage feedback and discussion
Understand your network
Know your limits
Seek improvements
Participate
See Top 10 tips on how to make your open access
research visible online, JISC Inform, 35, Winter 2012
62

63. Questions?
Any questions, comments, …?
Continue the discussion: blog post about this presentation to be
published at http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2013/12/
63

64. Licence and Additional Resources
This presentation, “Using Social Media to Enhance Your Research Activities” by
Brian Kelly, Cetis is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported
Licence
Note the licence covers most of the text in this presentation. Quotations may have
other licence conditions.
Images may have other licence conditions. Where possible links are provided
to the source of images so that licence conditions can be found.
Slides and further information available at
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/events/daad-conference-2013/
64