Will ‘Publish or Perish’ Become ‘Clicks or Canned’? The Rise of Academic Social Networks
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-08-01-will-publish-or-perish-become-clicks-or-canned-the-rise-of-academic-social-networks
Scholars want peers to find—and cite—their research, and these days that increasingly happens on social media. The old adage ‘publish or perish’ could soon go digital as ‘clicks or canned.’
Several platforms have emerged over the past decade, offering researchers the chance to share their work and connect with other scholars. But some of those services have a bad rap from academics who say commercial sites lack the integrity of institutional repositories run by traditional universities. (Among the most widely-villified are ResearchGate and Academia.edu, which is evident by griping on social media and elsewhere.)
a 2015 paper comparing services and tools offered by various academic social networks, says researchers must weigh the benefits and drawbacks of each. “They can be great tools to advance your research, especially social research,” she says. “But just like with Facebook or any other social network, we need to be aware of potential issues we might have with copyright or privacy.”
Academia.edu is the largest of the academic social networks.
Berlin-based ResearchGate
Created as a reference-management tool to help users organize their research, Mendeley also includes a number of social-networking features.
Scholabrate. The service claims to provide a more Facebook-esque, visual experience for academics seeking to network with others in their field.
Similar to Mendeley, Zotero functions primarily as a research tool, allowing users to collect, save, cite and share materials from a wide range of sources. The site also maintains a significant community of academics who can connect through groups and forums, or through their search engine.
Other sessions for Dr. James Johnson’s classes:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=jim+johnson
other sessions for EDAD courses:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=digital+literacy+edad
How do we search?
Academic Social Sites: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/11/13/scsu-edad-scopus-vs-academia-vs-researchgate/
Google. term:gov term:edu term:org
https://toolbox.google.com/datasetsearch
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/04/02/publish-metrics-ranking-and-citation-info/
How do we work/collaborate? (digital literacy)
Zoom, Skype Pro, Google Hangouts, Adobe Connect
Zotero, Mendeley (Scopus), Refworks, Endnote
http://orcid.org/register
Trends:
UDL (Universal Design for Learning): https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=universal+design
mind mapping: Coggle: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2019/03/13/coggle-mindmap/
notetaking, mindmapping etc for you and your students: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2019/08/29/note-taking-in-classes/
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/access/white-paper-social-media.pdf
#tfsocialmedia
Social media objectives:
- promotion
- collection management tool
- Outreach
- teaching and learning
Opportunities and challenges
- opportunity to build a sense of community between the library and its users
- the variability of skills across library staff for using social media effectively, striking the right tone between professional and personal, coordinating activities across the institution to avoid duplication
- maintaining visibility for the library brand and copyright issues relating to hosting library resources on social media sites
Policies and management:
- Librarians are divided on the benefits of introducing formalized social media policies and plans. About a third of libraries responding to the Taylor & Francis survey had a policy in place, but over 40% had no plans to introduce one
- Some believe that representing the library as a professional function with a
consistent tone is the priority, while others believe that a more human approach is important, with individual staff free to bring their own ideas and personalities to social media activities.
Effectiveness and assessment:
- difficult to prove return on effort and that the time required to do this was a major barrier to more comprehensive analysis of impact
- framework for evaluation, so it is likely that assessment against commonly agreed metrics will become an increasingly important part of social media activity within the library in the near future
Current Social Media Practices:
- In a study from the mid 2000s (Cantrell and Havens1 ), most library directors in the US when questioned about social media said they did not think that libraries had a role in social networking
- A more recent study from 2012 (Kai-Wah Chu and Du4) shows how use of social media by the library has now become mainstream. In this survey of libraries in Asia, North America and Europe, 71% were found to be using social media tools with a further 13% saying they planned to use them
Advantages of using social media
n Financially the costs of using social media are perceived to be low;
n It requires little training;
n It promotes library services and disseminates news quickly, delivering this information more directly to library users;
n It increases engagement and interactions with library users;
n It helps gather feedback to enhance user services;
n The promotion of library holdings via social media can help increase usage of content;
n It enhances communication both within the library and with other departments;
n It can be used for outreach activities through onward sharing, well beyond the institution itself, helping build connections and reputation more broadly
Social Media Objectives: graph on page 8 of the PDF document:
A To promote events
B To promote library services
C To promote resources/collections at the library
D To update on library refurbishments
E To promote new acquisitions
F To promote library guides, exhibition guides
G To connect with new students joining the university
H To engage with the academic community
I To connect with the wider community beyond the university e.g. the town in which the institution is based
J To connect with distance learners
K As a customer services tool- complaints, suggestions, enquiries, feedback
L To highlight subject specific information
M To connect with potential students
N As a teaching tool to promote information literacy, technology and writing tips (not library based)
O To promote courses
P As a research tool to locate official documents and studies
From UK-based focus group: “The library is a programme, not just a building.”
Channel preferences: Graph on page 10 of the PDF document
SOCIAL MEDIA USES Table on p 13 of the PDF document
Twitter n Distribute library news and information
n Provide customer service
n Build connections with researchers
n Build connections with other librarians and institutions
Facebook n Distribute library news and information
n More social and less formal than Twitter – share photographs and run competitions
n Arrange events including tracking RSVPs and sending event updates
n Engagement with students
Pinterest n Promote general library collections, digital and archive special collections and information literacy
n Set up of online repositories for students to pin researched references as part of
collaborative group work
n Display book titles to save time browsing and promote new titles
n Provide an arena for students and course leaders to pin reviewed and recommended reading
for a particular topic
n Develop communities with other online libraries
YouTube n Streaming film collections
n Instructional ‘how to’ videos teaching information literacy skills and how to use library
services and resources
There are also a number of other social media products that are being used by librarians that reflect regional
preferences and the need for the specific functions offered by niche applications.
Collection usage and discovery: Graph on p. 15
Teaching and learning
From US-based librarian interview: “The trend in education now is to create environments that foster collaborative learning. Faculty have ditched textbooks and course management systems in exchange for a Facebook page for their class, or a wiki, or a blog. These online environments are fun; students already know how to use them and are more motivated to comment, discuss and share in these environments than a dry CMS.”
Social media policies and management, p. 18
73% of respondents stating that they believed more roles dedicated to social media would appear in the library in the future.
Effectiveness of social media
From UK focus group: “We keep track of something particularly successful, then we redo the campaign 6 months later.”
From US focus group: “We have very few interactions with anyone on our Twitter feed.”
“Twitter is definitely the best platform, because we hashtag all of our posts with the keyword
of the publication, and so for the academic audience, once they click it’s going to pull up all
of the similar publications under that topic.
Promoting library social media channels
From UK focus group:
“We retweet each other to encourage new followers.” My note: Suggested by me regarding SCSU_Library for Twitter and Pinterest and SCSUTechinstruct but “considered” (in local lingo, slow death of the idea)