Social Media for Academics for the promotion of Scientific Research

The most popular Social Media platforms for Academics are LinkedIn, ORCID, ResearchGate, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Mendeley. These platforms are an excellent medium for the promotion of Scientific Research with a greater audience in mind. Social media channels may at times be of assistance to stay up-to-date in a field. Staying in contact with colleagues, and exchanging ideas on different subjects are other functions of these platforms.

But how can Social Media be used at its full potential for the promotion of Scientific Research?

Building the effective network requires time and effort. Interacting with others via Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter means that you will have to spend time reading, writing, producing short videos or slides, taking pictures, and uploading files to the different platforms. It is indeed an ongoing commitment to create connections and maintaining them.  An abandoned profile can sometimes do more harm than good as it does not reflect well on the timeliness of your research. So, before engaging in Social Media, make sure you are committed towards this approach. Social Media for academics can be very beneficial so maybe the commitment is worth it.

Some sites might be more suitable than others depending on the research field, experience, and free time. If time is a problem, LinkedIn is a suitable option. Other channels that can help you showcase your work without requiring frequent postings are ORCID, ResearchGate, and Mendeley. In all these platforms, it is usually enough to add recent publications or other updates to your profile to keep it interesting. LinkedIn and many other platforms enable scholars to post links, pictures, and articles, commenting on colleagues’ posts can further improve communication and interaction. Blogging via WordPress is where scholars usually write detailed articles or research stories to engage the audience. ResearchGate is a social networking platform especially for scientists and researchers to share and interact on research topics. It can also be used effectively to collaborate with other researchers on a common interest area. Twitter is gaining interest nowadays due to the nature of the Social Media itself, link on your tweets to increase your visibility.

You will be surprised, checking Twitter and LinkedIn accounts every day for five minutes is much more effective than going online for an hour once per month. For the promotion of scientific research, follow key organizations in the related field of study, post updates on the research, Shorten hyperlinks using sites such as bitly.com or goo.gl, provide links to social media profiles on your homepage and finally use Altmetrics to measure your research impact. There is no doubt that Social Media for academics is gaining popularity and attention.

Source: Enago