(Using Twitter to)

Enhance Your Research Profile

Professor Alex Stevens

Exercise 1: Open Twitter#PGRFestival

•Tweet what you want to learn at the PGR Festival, using hashtag #PGRFestival

Some wise words (pre-Twitter)

•“It’s not enough just to publish good articles. If you want your research to be known and used, you have to get it out there.”

Professor Jan Pahl, CBE, FASS

What is research profile for?

•To enhance the academic uses of your research.•To enhance the reputation of you and your department/university.•To have impact on policy and practice.•To get a job/get promoted.

Twitter compared to other forms of dissemination

Depth

ReachLow

Low

High

High

Twitter

Media

Journal article

Blog postPersonal network

Blockbuster book

Conference

Advantage of Twitter – Low cost, high connection•Twitter as a scale free network.

•High reach, as connections do the work E.g. my last 50 tweetsreached >65,000accounts(but accounts ≠ readers)

Page 6

Reasons to use Twitter

•To get current knowledge•To build networks

•To refine ideas•To give and get emotional support•To share resources (e.g. unpublished work, access to collective memory)

Twitter: the dark side

•Negative uses of Twitter To waste time and procrastinate To indulge in jealousy and feelings of inadequacy

To avoid deep thought To gather followers for the sake of vanity/numbers

Warning: Twitter alone ≠ citation

•There is little or no correlations between tweets and academic citations of an article. Haustein et al, 2013, Tweeting biomedicine: an analysis of tweets and citations in the biomedical literature

•Although others argue that highly tweeted articles are also more frequently cited. Darling et al, 2013. The role of Twitter in the life cycle of a scientific publication

How to build your research profile (using Twitter)

•Build your network Use Twitter to find and follow interesting people

•Do your research Use Twitter to find interesting and relevant studies

•Feed your network Tweet or retweet interesting studies & links

•Create dialogue in your network Tweet questions, reply to others.

•Then disseminate your findings. Tweeting links and highlight from your work.•Not just once, but when relevant and topical.

Skills for Twitter

•Concision•Self belief•Use of moderate extroversion

Or moderate your extroversion

Exercise 2: Concision#mykentthesis

•Summarise your research question in one Tweet.

•Tweet it using the hashtag #mykentthesis

•(If still not on Twitter, try doing it in one text message)

Twitter tips

Some resources•KAR

•Academia.edu

•LSE Impact Blog

Exercise 3: Share resources#ff #PGRFestival

•Tweet a link to a particularly useful website, blog or other resource.

•Use the hastags #ff and #PGRFestival

For discussion (on Twitter or in real life)

•Why do (or don’t) you use Twitter?•What ways have you found best for boosting your research profile?•What would you like to ask about boosting your research profile?

#PGRFestival

To deactivate your Twitter account

•Go to ‘settings’ on Twitter

•Scroll down to ‘Deactivate my account’