Disseminating your

Research to Maximise

Impact

Sheila Webber

Information School,

University of Sheffield

July 2014

• Session focuses on publicising what you do, not

measuring and evidencing impact

• Main focus of this session: Web 1/2/3

• Elements in this session:

– Introductory Presentation

– Activity - focus on a question/goal + Sharing

Sheila Webber, 2014

• Focus on existing working practices (including working relationship with supervisor)

• Low use of Web 2.0 e.g. 80% of students had never maintained their own blog for their research, and 78% had never posted to someone else's blog (from 2011 survey)

• “The cohort students confirmed that, in the early stage of their studies, they did not feel confident enough in themselves or their research findings to share them with anyone other than their supervisor” (p44)

• Concerns about: ensuring their PhD was their own work (not collaboration); revealing too much of their own ideas

Researchers of the future study (The British Library and HEFCE, 2012)

But note different findings in Minocha and Petre (2012) Sheila Webber, 2014

Background questions

• Why do you want to maximise impact?

• Who do you want to impress? (and what are their

web habits?)

• What media do you like using? (play to your

strengths and preferences)

Sheila Webber, 2014

Maximising research impact: the basics

(ie. have some research) • Do good research

• Publish good articles

• Make it easy for people to find the articles e.g. – Have titles with sought terms in them

– Listing the article in all your profiles

– Coherent, readable abstract

• Make it easy for people to read the articles (at least to start with people will want to read before they cite) e.g. – Open access journals

– Institutional repositories

– Other (legal) self archiving at e.g. Academia.edu

– Send (legal) copies to people you genuinely think might be interested

Sheila Webber, 2014

Places for profiles

• IDs: e.g. Orcid (unique ID)

• Profiles: Google Scholar, Academia.edu, Linked.In, ResearchGate, Institutional profile

– You need to keep them at least reasonably up to date

– Once you create a profile it may be difficult to delete it

– Better to have selection, which are full and up to date

• Remember highly linked and clicked sites will come high up e.g. my Sheffield Uni profile always comes top

Sheila Webber, 2014

ORCID - unique ID http://orcid.org/ Sheila Webber, 2014

Sheila Webber, 2014

I do not practice everything I preach...

• I am sort of old

• I have a fairly unusual name

• I have been on the web, posting things most days, since 1994

• I know a lot of people

• Therefore there is a lot of “Sheila Webber” on the internet and I get a bit complacent

• However to remain prominent with new generations of information literacy people I need to keep active and participating (brand/reputation)

Sheila Webber, 2014

Sheila Webber, 2014

Improvements? e.g.

• Using the same picture

• Issue of different names Webber/Yoshikawa

• Updating more regularly

• Giving more information about me and my expertise

• Following and endorsing more people so that they

follow and endorse me

Sheila Webber, 2014

Forgotten profiles.....

• Worth doing a search to hunt out those profiles you

have created and forgotten (see below)

• May include duplicate identities e.g. on Slideshare,

Youtube (if you have 2 Google identities, for

example)

“Top 30% of social

media users” is

scarcely impressive.

However is only

certain applications,

and only if you

connect to them

“Impact measurement” tools may or may not be useful

Sheila Webber, 2014

Potentially more useful: http://altmetrics.org/tools/

“altmetrics is

the creation

and study of

new metrics

based on the

Social Web

for analyzing,

and informing

scholarship.”

Sheila Webber, 2014

https://impactstory.org/SheilaWebber

Sheila Webber, 2014

But note it is a bit hit

and miss - this is

actually by far my

most cited paper (91

on WoS)

“Impactstory is in early

development. See limitations and

take it all with a grain of salt.”

https://impactstory.org/faq

Sheila Webber, 2014

(To repeat) Background questions

• Why do you want to maximise impact?

• Who do you want to impress? (and what are their

web habits?)

• What media do you like using? (play to your

strengths and preferences)

Sheila Webber, 2014

Develop a strategy

• Which will you concentrate on, how will you use the channel, how often will you engage/update

• How will people you want to know about it, get to know about it

• Any metrics associated with the channels you use (and what they mean)

• What are your indicators and perceived benefits (e.g. invitations to speak, contact with other researchers)

• Multi channel strategy

Sheila Webber, 2014

Multi channel strategy

• Adding paper to your selected profiles (e.g. Academia Edu)

• Blogging & tweeting it

• Summary of the paper on Slideshare

• Youtube video talking about your paper

• Emailing your paper to people that you genuinely think might be interested in it

• Making a poster of your paper and putting it on Figshare, Pinterest, Flickr, Slideshare....

• “Claiming” the paper on Google Scholar etc.

• Writing a targeted version for professional magazine (or whatever)

Sheila Webber, 2014

Useful resources • Bik, H.M. and Goldstein, M.C. (2013). An Introduction to Social Media for

Scientists. PLoS Biology, 11(4): e1001535. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001535

• Coyne, J. (2013, December 9) How to get involved with Twitter. http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/2013/12/09/advice-to-junior-academics-on-how-to-get-involved-with-twitter/

• Hall, H. (2014). Using social media for impact. http://www.slideshare.net/HazelHall/using-social-media-for-impact

• LSE Public Policy Group. (2011). Maximizing the impacts of your research: a handbook for social scientists. London, England: London School of Economics. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/the-handbook/ on their Impact Blog

• Oregon State University. (2014). Web and Emerging Technology Resources for Scientists and Partners. http://superfund.oregonstate.edu/apha-roundtable-communication-strategies#.U7So77EbQ-5

• Minocha, S. and Petre. M. (2012). Handbook of social media for researchers and supervisors: Digital technologies for research dialogues. https://www.vitae.ac.uk/vitae-publications/reports/innovate-open-university-social-media-handbook-vitae-2012.pdf/view

Sheila Webber, 2014

Activity!

• Form small groups

• Identify a dilemma/question/goal concerning disseminating your research that one of you has currently

• Can either go round democratically and then pick one, or someone jump in, it’s up to you

• Questions like: what are you disseminating? Why? Who do you want to notice it?

• Summarise dilemma/question/goal and suggestions/ advice (or further questions)

– Document on flip paper or on a medium you can email to me so I can display on screen

• Share – sees if there are more suggestions

Sheila Webber, 2014

Sheila Webber s.webber@shef.ac.uk

Twitter & SL: Sheila Yoshikawa

http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/

http://www.slideshare.net/sheilawebber/

Orcid ID 0000-0002-2280-9519

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23396182@N00/

Pictures by Sheila Webber

Reference

• The British Library and HEFCE. (2012).

Researchers of Tomorrow: the research behaviour

of Generation Y doctoral students.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/

reports/2012/Researchers-of-Tomorrow.pdf

Sheila Webber, 2014