Impact of Social Media on Scientific Research
EMBO Rep. 2020 May 6; 21(5): e50550.
The growth of social media in science
Social media has evolved from a mere communication channel to an integral tool for give-and-take and research collaboration
Philip Hunter
1 London U.k.,
Abstract
Social media has become popular amongst scientists to communicate inside and beyond their communities. More specialized channels and the ongoing lockdowns further increase their value and utilize.
Subject area Categories: Methods & Resources, S&Southward: Ethics
Social media has get so integral to today's world of piece of work every bit well as leisure that its effective apply for communications and collaboration has become a scientific discipline in itself. Scientists can now obtain professional person advice to exploit social media successfully and avoid pitfalls, both for communicating among themselves and with the wider public. Yet, at to the lowest degree when it comes to outward communication, many scientists are even so reluctant to embrace the various channels, either out of concerns of attracting negative publicity or due to lack of time. Some researchers have even reined back on social media, non necessarily because they accept endured bad experiences but rather dismay over some of the negativity circulating. Still, examples of how social media have enabled and eased collaborative inquiry abound, and the ongoing Covid‐nineteen pandemic and ensuing lockdowns are expected to farther heave social media acceptance and utilise.
A plethora of channels and media
To behave a rational assessment of the use of social media in science, it is necessary to distinguish between the diverse categories and channels. This has become harder equally social media evolved and diversified to cater to particular communities. This fragmentation has eroded any clear definition of what social media is, commented Steve Midway, a fisheries ecologist at Louisiana Land Academy in the The states and coauthor of a paper indicating that employ of Twitter could boost citation rates in environmental and in other scientific disciplines 1. "I don't experience I fully understand whatsoever more what social media is", he said. "When we started looking at social media around 2014/2015 it was all Facebook and Twitter with a few others here and at that place. At present it'due south still Facebook and Twitter, but at that place are a whole load of others and people have niches inside social media. I feel the landscape has itself changed, not just what is happening within that landscape".
… the ongoing Covid‐19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns are expected to further boost social media acceptance and apply.
Some scientists would add LinkedIn to Facebook and Twitter equally the large 3 general sites not dedicated specifically to science. Each has pros and cons from the perspective of communication both within and with the wider public. Facebook has the advantage of greater public achieve, which makes it peradventure the best platform for establishing online communities or for collaborating in projects. Indeed, a 2018 written report by the United states of america‐based think tank and polling grouping Pew Research Center plant that Facebook posts related to research funding accomplished the highest engagement levels on that platform (https://world wide web.pewresearch.org/scientific discipline/2018/03/21/user-engagement-with-posts-on-science-related-facebook-pages-is-more-common-for-visual-posts-calls-to-activeness/).
Twitter on the other hand has little direct value for seeking funding or collaborating, but has been widely used by scientists for interacting among themselves and tweeting virtually new inquiry. Furthermore, Twitter activity does seem to correlate with citation rates, which in plough has drawn more scientists to the medium. A 2018 survey related to conservation and environmental papers found a potent association between scientific discipline communication, as measured by the Altmetric Attention Score, and commendation rates 2. This occurred even though there is usually a significant time lag between the initial social media communication and citations rolling in over the following months and even years.
Microsoft'southward LinkedIn—originally dubbed as the Facebook of work and business organisation—is not the most widely used social media network, simply commands the greatest respect among many scientists considering of its professional focus. LinkedIn started as a platform for advertising vacancies, just it now also allows staging virtual laboratory meetings and discussions. Not surprisingly, this use has soared during the ongoing Covid‐nineteen crisis. Indeed, LinkedIn has been promoting its virtual platform both to conduct remote interviews and to help sustain critical research. It has also been at the forefront of efforts to combat fake news over Covid‐xix through a joint commitment with other major social media players: Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Google, and the latter's subsidiary YouTube (https://news.linkedin.com/2020/march/supporting-our-members-and-customers-during-covid-xix).
The situation is different in Mainland China. LinkedIn is available because information technology is not seen every bit a purveyor of subversive comment, but Google, Facebook, and Twitter are blocked. A lot of equivalent social media activeness amidst Chinese scientists is conducted via WeChat, described every bit the country's app of everything. WeChat allows users to exchange personal posts, dubbed Moments, among friends or interest groups, equally well as pushing a feed "Twitter‐like" to subscribers. Information technology too performs the role of some niche apps or messaging sites elsewhere, such as Slack, which has gained popularity for real‐time collaboration and discussing results or experiments. Chinese scientists tin engage in similar interactions through WeChat's group chat function.
Specialized on research
The other major category of social media, even if non in the strictest sense, comprises the dedicated scientific sites which are by and large not accessed much past the general public. These have a stronger focus on the scientific literature, with Academia.edu intent on disrupting traditional bookish publishing. Other major players include Europe's ResearchGate headquartered in Berlin and Elsevier's London‐based Mendeley. Then at that place is Semantic Scholar from the Seattle‐based Allen Institute for AI, which is pitched more than as a search engine, as is Google Scholar. Of these, ResearchGate and Academia.edu are the two largest and sometimes bracketed with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn equally the large five social media networks used by scientists.
Some accept actually retreated from full general social media, not necessarily owing to bad experiences but out of frustration with a growing aura of negativity or simply information overload.
Academia.edu, the master focus of which is sharing publications, has only over 42 million registered users and more viii million papers listed. ResearchGate has a stronger focus on collaboration and its membership is currently xvi 1000000 users who are affiliated to an institution, which the network'southward co‐founder and CEO Ijad Madisch regards every bit a key differentiator. "We do this to create a trusted community and content is always associated with a researcher's name and profile", he said. Like to LinkedIn, ResearchGate was founded around contour curation. "We then moved on to enable fairly elementary behaviors such every bit Q&A", Madisch added. "Next, nosotros helped researchers to share data, before adding features around projects and teams".
ResearchGate now has a greater appetite, according to Madisch, of encouraging researchers to exist more open about their work. "One area where I would really similar to encounter us pushing things frontwards is to help researchers to share their work, including negative results and failed experiments, earlier in the research cycle", Madisch said. "This requires deep, cultural shifts in the ecosystem that supports science, including changes to the manner that research is recognized and rewarded. So although ResearchGate has been going for xi years now, we're actually only just at the outset of a long journeying".
Ups and downs
Many scientists regard these more than dedicated networks either as a safe space for collaboration, or else more probable to benefit them than the large three. Some have really retreated from general social media, not necessarily owing to bad experiences simply out of frustration with a growing aura of negativity or just information overload. "I don't employ social media much at all at present. I deactivated my Facebook business relationship five years ago and only do about five posts a year now", commented Brandon Peoples, a fisheries ecologist from Clemson University in the USA and coauthor with Midway. "In that location'southward so much data coming that information technology can exist overwhelming. Then there'southward so much negativity, for example when talking about this virus", he added, referring to Covid‐19.
Yet despite personal concerns, Peoples is more sanguine over the overall bear upon of social media on scientific publishing. "What social media does is, it gives people the opportunity for more equal visibility", he said. Information technology has, as Peoples indicated, achieved a caste of democratization by allowing individuals to publish work on a pre‐print server and rely on those search engines such every bit Google Scholar to bring those papers to larger audiences without having to worry so much what journal they are published in.
Peoples also identified another aspect of democratization achieved by social media: giving a voice to scientists who would previously accept been shy of communicating in public. "But like anything, face to confront communication is a good way, but some people tin can be introverted but seem very vocal or extravert on social media platforms", he explained. "So that can give an opportunity for people to come out of their shell".
There is a flipside though, which is that it is not always the best or most insightful scientists who come out of their crush. Or as Midway put it, "They who brand the most racket on twitter are not necessarily the best scientists. A more real downside though is that twitter is a very rapid medium and and so y'all should be careful to express what you lot mean". More than subtle insights practice not lend themselves well to the short medium of Twitter peculiarly. "Social media does not do dash well and a lot of science is nuanced", Peoples added.
They who make the about noise on twitter are non necessarily the all-time scientists.
Choosing the correct medium
Some of these problems can exist averted by selecting the appropriate social medium. Madisch at ResearchGate concedes that Twitter is a vital tool for scientists and complements the more scientific discipline‐focused networks such as his own. "ResearchGate and platforms similar Twitter piece of work really well together", he said. "The value that ResearchGate brings to researchers is relevance, trust and customs. What Twitter offers is the potential for very rapid and broad appointment. […] Scientists share on Twitter the work that they do on ResearchGate".
Information technology is indeed Twitter that is often at the front line of advice for scientists and information technology is the medium where pressure can be exerted on academic institutions and even funding bodies over decision making, according to Billie Swalla, Chair of the Academy of Washington'southward Biology Inquiry Committee. "Twitter has been best to get bad decisions reversed at universities considering they hate the negative printing", he said. In some cases, information technology has proved fruitful in promoting piece of work and attracting funding, although success there is more mixed, Swalla added. "I have heard of others being contacted past NIH (National Institutes of Wellness) after putting something on Twitter, but I have never been and then lucky".
Facilitating collaboration
For many scientists though, the most practical and sustained advantages of social media are the collaborative aspects: facilitating set exchange of information and obtaining answers to questions faster than could be washed otherwise, according to Orazio Romeo, a molecular epidemiologist from the University of Messina in Italia. "I think the primary reward for a scientist in the use of social media is the quick 'comparing' with other skilful colleagues who aid to ameliorate understand and interpret the results generated by the experiments, often making information technology possible to ask new kinds of enquiry questions", he explained. "Moreover, there are also several technical advantages as it is possible to share pace‐by‐pace lab protocols or ask comments about experimental procedures and methods, troubleshooting and tips from experts in the field, activities that until a few years ago were possible only by participating in likewise‐expensive congresses".
Just maybe the greatest and most memorable benefits are establishing long‐lasting collaborations that otherwise might not accept been possible.
But perchance the greatest and most memorable benefits are establishing long‐lasting collaborations that otherwise might not have been possible. Romeo gave ane instance of a collaboration with Nigerian fungal pathogen specialist Emmanuel Nnaemeka Nnadi, currently at that state'southward Plateau State University in Bokkos. "When I starting time met Emmanuel in 2011 on ResearchGate, he was still a MSc student who was working on molecular characterization of Nigerian fluconazole‐resistant Candida albicans isolates for his thesis", Romeo recalled. "By contrast, my research focused mainly on the isolation and molecular identification of Candida Africana, a detail C. albicans biovariant that shows an exceptional ability to colonize and infect mainly homo genitalia. Therefore, we decided to interact and Emmanuel sent to my laboratory hundreds of fungal strains to study. We published the results in Medical Mycology, and this was merely the kickoff of a long series of scientific papers published in of import peer‐reviewed journals in the expanse of medical mycology. The last article was recently published in Mycopathologia and reports the whole‐genome sequencing and associates of an uncommon MLST genotype of the pathogenic fungus Cryptococcus neoformans recovered in Nigeria".
Such experiences will likely become more common during the lockdowns to boxing the corona pandemic, which has thrown many research projects into jeopardy.
Romeo highlighted this as a nifty example of social media's upside, the ability to strike upward serendipitous collaborations between people who take never met. "It is extraordinary and surprising how Emmanuel and I have worked together and produced articles for years without ever meeting personally", he said. "Later seven years we met for the outset time at the 20th Congress of the International Lodge for Human and Animal Mycology in Amsterdam in 2018. It was very exciting and moving for both of us and it gave me an opportunity to discuss with him likewise almost our life experiences, goals and expectation, including the scientific research in Nigeria".
Such experiences volition likely become more common during the lockdowns to battle the corona pandemic, which has thrown many research projects into jeopardy. Only as chiefly though, the crisis has underlined the importance of accurate science advice via the large social media channels to counter the torrent of faux news. Recognizing this, the Earth Economical Forum has called on scientists to appoint much more with the public through social media: "the earth needs more scientists who want to interpret their expertise into effective advice on global concerns and anxieties to cut through the noise of fear and assumptions based on the unknown" (https://world wide web.weforum.org/calendar/2020/03/science-communication-covid-coronavirus/). According to Swalla, some scientists have been stepping up to the plate, even if the message does not always gets beyond. "It has been interesting during the COVID‐19 pandemic to see how scientists are doing their all-time to convey very difficult ideas to the full general public, with mixed success".
References
1. Peoples BK, Midway SR, Sackett D, Lynch A, Cooney PB (2016) Twitter predicts citation rates of ecological enquiry. PLoS Ane 11: e0166570 [PMC gratis article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
2. Lamb CT, Gilbert SL, Ford AT (2018) Tweet success? Scientific communication correlates with increased citations in ecology and conservation. PeerJ half dozen: e4564 [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
Articles from EMBO Reports are provided here courtesy of The European Molecular Biological science Organisation
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