This document discusses effective strategies for disseminating research findings. It argues that keeping research "closed" is ineffective and that funders now require sharing results as the research progresses. Some effective dissemination strategies mentioned include maintaining a project website, blogging to share work in progress, and using tools like Twitter and SlideShare to engage others. Open access to research is also discussed as increasing impact and affordability. Overall, the document encourages collaborating and sharing research openly and continuously in order to maximize its benefits and influence.

1. What works and what doesn’t work
in research dissemination
Terese Bird, Learning Technologist & SCORE Research Fellow
University of Leicester
University of South Africa, Pretoria, 13 June 2012

2. What will we talk about?
1. Collaborate and disseminate as you go
‘Closed’ doesn’t work
Funder requirements
Examples of sharing data along the way
Examples of academics – ‘blogging plus’
Tools
2. Open Research
Open research issues - affordability, inequality
Research Impact is greater when we open it up
Metrics from Leicester LRA
Metrics from outside Leicester
3. How to start

3. 1.Collaborate & disseminate as you go
Cann, A., Dimitriou, K., and Hooley, T. (2011), p15

4. Does ‘closed’ work?
Working together rather than in competition brings the
power of shared information and investigation.
Example
The Myelin Repair Foundation (MRF) was founded to address the inefficiencies
and structural barriers present across Multiple Sclerosis research efforts. These
challenges included
• academic research labs working independently in expertise ‘silos’,
• widespread secrecy and safeguarding of research progress and knowledge,
• limited publication of research producing non-results,
and others. These longstanding coordination issues are exacerbated by the fact
that such approaches to drug discovery and development are unsuitable for
complex, multi-casual diseases like MS.
http://blog.hbs.edu/hbsinov8/?p=1764

5. There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate
wherever they meet. –Eric Hoffer
Image courtesy of Myelin Repair Foundation on Flickr

6. Funder Requirements
JISC now requires ‘disseminate as you go’ and
‘disseminate from day one’
“Dissemination informs the community about
what you have developed and the benefits of
using it” - JISC

7. How does one collaborate and
disseminate as you go?
• Share findings as you go
• Project website
• Academic blog
– Open research notebook
– journaling what happens in practice
– Recording encountered risks, different from the
original project timelines
– Air new ideas, see reaction, discuss
• Invite to your site (Twitter, Google+, Facebook)
• Share presentations on Slideshare

8. Example of releasing data midstream –
speed of light
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/27676-cern-admits-anomaly-in-neut

10. Accelerated Research Collaboration
Model in Medical Research
http://blog.hbs.edu/hbsinov8/?p=1764

11. Risks???

12. Risks
• Stealing ‘but I might have stolen them to start with’. We
don’t always attribute.
• Sharing simply not allowed- industrial funder.
• Someone may misinterpret your idea, misuse your idea.
Even safety issues.
• Social Sci – incorrectly attribute causality
• Ethical – exposing data you shouldn’t expose
• Steal your thunder just before you show your stuff
• Is the user interested in half-baked stuff?
• Only brownie points for journal articles, not blogs
• We don’t want to see blogs as references, not peer-
reviewed

13. Positive examples – Alan Cann

16. Positive examples – Cristina Costa

17. What I did with SPIDER
• Website
• Blog
Disseminate & collaborate
• Online survey – baseline
• Scoop.it – identify, curate,
collaborate, disseminate
• Data collection:
Twitter, Weibo
• Conferences
• Slideshare

18. Draw readers to your project website

19. Tasks and Tools

20. Mendeley, Delicious, Google Docs, RSS Aggregator
iGoogle
Facebook Dropbox
Twitter Scoop.it
Google+
LinkedIn
Wordpress
Google+
Evernote
Wetpaint
Wordpress, Twitter, Slideshare, Academia.edu, Flickr, Pinterest, LinkedIn

21. 2. Open Research
We cannot afford ‘closed’
– Princeton
– Harvard
– Elsevier boycott

22. UK Open Access Implementation
Group Reports
The UK public sector already saves £28.6 million by using open
access.
Both the public sector and the voluntary sector would see
further direct and indirect benefits from increased access
to UK higher education research publications. Already,
more Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) organisations
use open access than pay for subscriptions
The UK public sector spends £135 million a year, made up of
subscriptions and time spent trying to find articles,
accessing the journal papers it needs to perform
effectively. Each extra 5% of journal papers accessed via
open access on the web would save the public purse £1.7
million, even if no subscription fees were to be saved.
<http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/575/

23. Leicester Research Archive Example
• Traditional printed PhD thesis is read a total of
4 times over the life of the academic (avg)
• Leicester Research Archive: most theses are
downloaded 10-40x monthly (avg)
• Top 10 LRA accesses in 2011 were PhD theses:
– 1772 accesses for the number 1
– 1584 accesses for the number 3

24. If you want people to find and read your research, build up a digital presence
in your discipline, and use it to promote your work when you have something
interesting to share. It’s pretty darn obvious, really.
If (social media interaction is often) then (Open access + social media =
increased downloads). - Melissa Terras, UCL
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/04/19/blog-tweeting-papers-
worth-it/

25. It’s all political
• REF doesn’t seem to
reward the new models(?)
• UK Minister enlisting
Jimmy Wales’ help to open
research publications –
efficiency & effectiveness
• White House petition for
open access to research

26. 3. How to do it? Follow the stars!

27. It’s in your hands!
Thank you!
Cann, A., Dimitriou, K., Hooley, T. (2011) Social media: a guide for
researchers. 15.