This document provides 23 ways for researchers to communicate and showcase their skills in an era where academia is changing. It discusses tools for blogging, making presentations and videos visible, using social networks like Twitter and Mendeley, tracking alternative metrics with tools like Altmetric and ImpactStory, collaborating online, and practicing productivity habits. The overall message is that researchers need to find new ways to produce, communicate and measure the impact of their work as open access and demonstrating societal impact become more important.

1. Research Hacks
23 ways to communicate and showcase your skills
@andy_tattersall
a.tattersall@sheffield.ac.uk

2. Academia is changing forever
MOOCs
Open Access
Impact Agenda/REF
Big Data
Altmetrics

3. Image © CC BY Marfis77
http://bit.ly/1xuiRUY
Learning technologists, teachers and lecturers
think of the pedagogy when employing new
technologies.
What do researchers do?

5. What I’ll discuss
23 Ideas and tools to try out and…
Produce
Communicate
Go Mobile
Measure
Stay on Track

7. # 1 Blog about what you know

8. # 2
Make
your
Presentations
Visible

9. # 3 Rethink your Posters

11. # 4 Make a video

12. #5 Make an animation

13. # 6 Write a Lay Research Summary
Image CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 http://bit.ly/19GL3MF Louveciennes

14. # 7 Record a Lay
Summary of your work
Image CC BY 2.0 http://bit.ly/1xLqbJB Francois Schnell

15. #8 Collaborate
live on your
paper
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hir.12033/abstract

16. # 9 Tweet

17. https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/361939461241708544 [Last Accessed 20/3/2015]

18. Prescribing a Digital Technology
● You need to understand why you are taking it
● You need to understand the benefits
● You need to understand the side-effects
● You need to understand that the benefits may
take time
● You may need two courses
● You may need a different intervention
● Do not feel pressured to use it - as it won’t work

20. 20
# 10 Join a social network

21. Social Networks are:
It’s not what you know, but who you know
+
It’s what they know as well
= Social Capital
21

22. * © The University of Sheffield
22
Horses for Courses

23. Online collaboration: Scientists and the social network
23
Van Noorden, R, (2014) Nature 512,126–129 doi:10.1038/512126a {Last Accessed 5/3/2015]

24. * © The University of Sheffield
24
Professional tool for a mostly non-academic audience. Useful for
connecting with those aligned to your research outside of the
academy. Crowdsources your talents.
Alternative metric and useful way to share research outputs to an
academic audience. Discover research in your field and what journal
is best for you
Social network for researchers for sharing papers and follow
research in your field of work
Superb icebreaker, social network and discovery engine.
Social network of like-minded researchers. Huge database of papers
and references. Reference management and alternative metric tool
Social network that connects to your LinkedIn and Academia.edu
accounts. Discovers researchers with similar interests
Useful alternative to Facebook. Works very similarly with circles and
communities. Useful for teaching staff and those running events

25. Don’t be afraid…..to say no
*
25
Or at least point them to the right social network

26. #11 About.me

27. #12
Bite Size your
content

28. #13 Evernote
Image CC BY 2.0 http://bit.ly/1B20KEJ Othree

29. #14 Listen and learn on the go

30. #15

31. #16

32. #17 Almetric.com

33. The dissemination and communication
of research is changing
Presentations and seminars
Funding and ethics applications
Academic books
Journal articles and posters
Term papers and essays
Meetings and conferences
Correspondence
Open access
Supplementary data
Online reference managers
Press
Post-publication peer-review
Social media
Blogs

34. So, what are they?

35. Traditional metrics struggle to
reflect this
- Slow to accrue
- Focus mostly on published articles
Published
June 2014:
Starting to impact the behaviour of academics

36. Development of altmetrics
(alternative indicators)
● To complement, not replace traditional metrics
● Help people understand how research is being received and
used, and by who
● Not intended as an indicator of quality
● Can help provide further evidence of engagement and ‘societal
impact’
● Give credit for research outputs other than articles

37. What Altmetrics look at

38. Digging in to the data

39. The Altmetric score and donut
● developed to give an at-a-glance summary of the attention work has received
● not an indicator of quality of the research!
● useful when looking at data for lots of articles at once

40. Demographics
Twitter data from
bio’s
Mendeley data based
on who has saved
the article to their
library - anonymised

41. Researchers
altmetric.it

42. #18 Impact Story

44. #19 Figshare

45. #20 Join a conversation

47. https://unroll.me/
#21 Cut down on distraction

48. #22 Form a peer support network

49. # 23 Productivity Hacks
Avoid email for the first hour morning
Use an app like 30/30 to plan your day
Try the Pomodoro Technique
Have a walking meeting
Meditate
Eat a frog

50. Everyone likes lists these days
● Get a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for your
outputs
● Get an ORCiD account
● Update your Google Scholar profile
● Try Twitter (at least to see what’s going on)
● Put your presentations on to Slideshare (check
copyright first)
● You are ALL experts in something - write an
expert article for such as The Conversation
http://www.doi.org/index.html
http://orcid.org/

51. The definition of
insanity is doing
the same thing
over and over and
expecting a
different result
Image © CC BY thematthewknot
http://bit.ly/1oGnFVy

52. Thank you
@andy_tattersall