Building Your Online Presence as a Researcher
By Isabel Zbukvic (PhD Candidate, ResPlat Intern) @isabelzbukvic
Research is going virtual. Journals and reference managers are moving online, academics are increasingly using Twitter to connect, and blogs are a legitimate way to find out about new publications and cutting-edge technologies. I joined the ResPlat team 4 months ago to manage the online presence for a mid-career researcher, Dr Jee Hyun Kim. Let it be known: I am not a marketing or IT graduate. I am a neuroscience PhD candidate. When I started this journey my tech skills did not go much beyond searching PubMed through the library website. But I have since built a solid Twitter following, created a Wikipedia page, learned how to create social media graphics, and mastered managing multiple social media channels simultaneously.
At ResPlat, we believe in the power of the internet to increase the impact of research by reaching more people in more places. We also believe that “cyber-citations” (such as how many times an article has been mentioned in blogs, cited in Wikipedia, or shared on Twitter) reveal the impact of a paper. Traditional citations are currently the most widely recognized measure of research impact. However, there is an emerging approach to measuring impact that captures these online forms of credit. This method uses alternative metrics, or AltMetrics.
“Altmetrics expand our view of what impact looks like, but also of what’s making the impact.” - J. Priem, 2010. Altmetrics: A manifesto.
The advantages of using AltMetrics in addition to citations alone is A) their speed (online feedback takes mere hours compared to literally years for traditional citations to accumulate) and B) their ability to capture diversity. By representing your research as it appears across a wide range of online platforms, AltMetrics builds a more detailed, informative picture of your true impact.
I want to share what I’ve learned about increasing your web presence to help make it easy for all researchers to increase their online impact and thereby improve their AltMetrics score. As the academic world moves increasingly online, AltMetrics about your online impact are being used by a growing number of institutions to measure and report the attention and engagement surrounding their research outputs. Going forward, they could be used to help inform decisions on hiring, grants, or tenure. Of course improving your online presence is not just a matter of increasing your AltMetrics score for its own sake. Getting yourself out on the WWW is also about connecting with other researchers, engaging with the public, and telling the world about the incredible work you’re doing.
Wikipedia: Embrace your inner gnome
Not all internet trolls are evil. In fact, Wikipedia survives and thrives on users known as WikiGnomes. These are the people that build, approve (or reject), and edit the pages of this tome. To increase your citations across Wikipedia (which increases your AltMetrics score), you must become a WikiGnome!
For me, learning the ropes of Wikipedia was a learning curve. I’ve never coded, so seeing the other side of a webpage was something similar to dissecting my first rat in Mr. Gannon’s Year 9 biology class: terrifying, fascinating, and completely enthralling. For anyone who likes reading articles to find the best place to add their own citation (i.e. every academic ever), Wikipedia editing is seriously addictive. Thankfully, you do not need coding skills to be a WikiGnome! Wikipedia has a very handy feature called VisualEditor that makes it possible to make changes in situ – this means you can edit directly onto your page of choice, in plain English, with the click of a button. There are definitely some glimpses into the realm of web code, especially when you’re starting a page from scratch: fear not! Once you get the hang of it (and there is SO much information in Wikipedia on how to use it, unsurprisingly) you will be gnoming with the best of them.
- When creating your own Wiki page, include everything! When I first created the page for Dr Jee Hyun Kim, I thought it would be overkill to simply list all her published papers. When I submitted the page, I received the feedback: not notable enough. I added a complete list of publications and all editorial positions, re-submitted, and the page went live within the fortnight.
- Keep an eye on other relevant pages. By ‘watching’ pages of interest, you can see when other gnomes make changes (including to something you might have added).
- Keep chipping away! Wikipedia is vast, and it can be overwhelming deciding where to start. Choose one relevant page, and start by adding one sentence with one citation. Keep relevant Wiki pages bookmarked and add a reference when you have 15 minutes before that meeting, or when you just can’t read another word of that literature review.
Twitter: Find your unique voice in a choir of 320 million
Twitter is your most powerful tool for creating personal connections with both academics and the public, as well as the people that bridge the scholar-everyday-human gap (like bloggers and journalists). There are many personal benefits to increasing your social media presence as a researcher (and you can read about them here, here, and here). I want to tell you about what’s worked for me.
First, you need to find your voice. This will be what you Tweet about, as well as your tone. I suggest choosing two topics: your major and your minor. Your Twitter major will naturally be your own research. Keep it broad, so you can easily Tweet to both academics and the public. For instance, Jee’s research involves using rodent models to study the neurobiology of extinction learning. This can broadly be classified as research about memory (hence, @About_Memory). This is easy to communicate for both scholarly and lay followers. Your Twitter minor will be something that represents something more personal, like your funny side, your family life, or your love of internet cats. Jee’s minor still relates to research but is more about the personal experience of being a young woman in academia, the trials and tribulations of “the system”, and advocating for #womeninSTEM. Tweets that earn the most engagement for Jee are usually those directed at academic followers rather than the general public. I suspect that as her following grows, this may change - Jee gets at least a couple of new followers every day, so time will tell.
On that subject, when you first start using Twitter, it may feel ridiculous sharing content with 0 followers. My advice for these early days is to persevere! Start by following people in a similar field. There are several hashtags that you can search to help you find others in the research community (like #acwri #scholarSundays #ECRchat #phdchat). When you follow a user, they usually follow you back. Once you have a few followers, the Twitterverse will open up. Trust me.
My top 5 Tweets for @About_Memory (provided by Twitter Analytics)
- Be a good listener. Someone Tweet something you like? Don’t just <3 it - tell them directly! Tag users to start conversations of your own. By interacting with others, you can help form real connections with people in your field. You’ll also increase your chances of your Tweet being seen by other people's’ followers as well as your own.
- Twitter has a fantastic in-built metrics program of its own called Twitter Analytics. Here you can find out which of your Tweets earn the best engagement, and use that to inform future Tweets.
- Recycle! Posted a Tweet that earned a lot of engagement? Tweet it again! Obviously you need to leave some time in between, but as you gain more followers, many won’t have seen your past Tweets before.
- You can also Tweet more than once about the same thing, aiming at different audiences. For academics, you might include more detail, and specific handles like #science #ECRchat #peerreview. For the general public you might include more conceptual or personal handles, like #love #memories #throwbackThursday
Instagram: Become an artist without cutting your ear off
Yes, Instagram is a valid platform for researchers. And no, you will not need to perfect your duckface (although the occasional selfie can’t hurt). Instagram takes advantage of the fact that humans are primarily visual creatures (which also explains why images on Twitter receive more engagement than text only). Instagram is now also the #2 social media following Facebook in Australia, with over 5 million active monthly users. It’s is a wonderful way to share all kinds of images: figures from papers [see A1], infographics about your field, or quotes from yourself. Ok, so quoting yourself has a bit of the royal ‘we’ about it. But there is no better way to tell the world about what you do than by putting it in a great font, on an eye-catching background. After all, you’re the expert! Use a simple, free tool like Canva to create images of your own pearls of wisdom. And using a social media manager (see below) means you can post them all to Twitter at the same time. Double happiness.
Image made for @drjeehyunkim on Canva, using a histology image from my own collection
- Instagram is more about connecting with the public than with your fellow academic, so choose your content accordingly. Think about talking to your great aunt Mildred, not Reviewer #2.
- Your Insta pics don’t always have to be literal. They can also communicate the emotions that your research evokes, rather than the data. Think about setting a certain mood to your account. Jee’s research relates to memory, so I aim for images to imbue a sense of happy nostalgia.
Social media manager: Streamline your operations
Many of us wish to be more savvy with social media, but feel like time won’t allow it. Totally fair! I felt the same when I started. I won’t lie, you absolutely do need to commit at least a few hours per week for your online presence to have real effect. Luckily there are several tools around designed to save you time. These platforms (e.g. SproutSocial, Buffer, Hootsuite, Feedient) allow you to manage all your social media channels from one dashboard. You can schedule your posts in advance, and your manager will automatically publish the content at the most appropriate time. This means you can sit down on a Sunday afternoon, and schedule all your Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram posts for the week (or even more). Genius.
I wonder how many academics have an ‘eat now’ reminder set in their phone so they don’t forget lunch
It’s been a wild ride learning the ropes of building a web presence. I’d say the biggest challenge has been the times when I’ve put content out there and it hasn’t received much engagement. In those moments it does feel a bit like you’re yelling into the abyss. But for me, the instances where I’ve engaged in live conversation with researchers on the other side of the planet about a new technique or the joys of publishing a paper make all those trying times worth it.
We know that many scholars use Twitter to discover the work of other researchers. The people who fund our work (i.e. the public) deserve to know how we’re spending their money. Young people need inspiration from more diverse community leaders, like women, people of CALD backgrounds, and members of the LGBTQIA community. The internet gives us an equal platform to do this. And moving forward, more academic institutions are more likely to acknowledge our online engagement using AltMetrics. I say, the time is now to start making your impact.
Appendix
A1. Never post unpublished figures on the internet. If you didn’t know, now you do. Anything you post on the web (including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, your blog, anywhere!) is considered published material. That means journals won’t accept it – and your university may not accept it as part of your thesis.
