Social media tips for researchers

Author: Saikiran Chandha is the CEO and founder of SciSpace — the only integrated research platform to discover, understand, write, and publish research papers.

Social media has become a key component for researchers to advance their careers in today’s digital world. After all, there are over 4.62 billion social media users around the globe. And the likes of Facebook and YouTube have more than 2.5 billion monthly active users. The reach it offers is incredible.

Social media can be highly beneficial for any researcher if you can use it well. In this article, we’ll look at practical ways a researcher can use social media to boost their career.

Disseminate your work more widely

A 2020 study showed a positive relationship between citation count and Altmetric Attention Score. This score aggregates activities surrounding research outputs in social media. Sharing your paper on social media can help improve your reach and get more citations.

While journals are consumed by academia, social media opens up your paper to a much more extensive and diverse set of readers, from your field or otherwise. It gives you a chance to discuss your study’s broader implications and narratives without having to worry about the content format.

How to get started?

• Search for keywords and hashtags related to your work; use tools like Tweetdeck to monitor conversations, participate in relevant ones, and build up an audience even before it is published.
• Use AI-powered research assistants like SciSpace to generate quick summaries and questions related to your research that you can share online. 
• Conduct AMAs on platforms like Reddit and Twitter or Lives on Instagram to drive discussions around your paper, dig deeper into the topic, and get feedback from readers.
• Write a thread breaking down the paper, tag co-authors, affiliated institutions, publishers, and others who contributed to your research, and pin the same to your profile.
• Copy-paste your paper’s DOI on HowCanIShareIt to know which version of the article can be archived and where; create a Bitly link as soon as it’s available, and share it with your audience.
• Once the paper is published, use the SharedIt link to distribute your view-only, full-text subscription research articles anywhere.
• Use Dimensions.ai, Altmetric.com, or Crossref to observe how your paper is being discussed and shared, if it’s creating an impact, and how to amplify it further.
• List your papers as publications on your LinkedIn profile; for each one, mention the journal or conference, a short abstract, and your role to ensure the visibility of your work.

Find collaboration opportunities

Social networks are a great way to discover content, connect with people, and build relationships. A recent study indicates that this is applicable in academic settings too.

Take any social media network, from Twitter and LinkedIn to Academia; they let you explore conversations and profiles and even post queries for feedback and collaborations. With collaboration among researchers up by 15% from 2020, these networks are becoming more valuable as they present opportunities to directly connect and work with peers across domains and geographies and even with corporates and policymakers closely.

How to get started?

• Create a Linktree page with links to your work and other career-related info: contact details, experience, area of interest, and online calendar; add the same to your bio across all social media and email signatures.
• Reach out to peers, other individuals, and institutions who organize Twitter Spaces, YouTube Webinars, podcasts, and Reddit AMAs relevant to your niche; find out if they can host you as a guest or moderator. 
• Use social media to promote calls for papers, retainers, collaborations, and job opportunities; get your network to help you spread the word.
• Be active on forums and Q&A sites, like GitHub and StackExchange, and help solve problems; this way, you may even enter and influence public debates on topics you are researching or well-versed in.
• Make your datasets, code, and other documents available online using platforms such as Figshare or Zenodo — this allows peers to build on your research or explore collaboration possibilities. Each time someone uses or cites your artifact, you receive credit.
• Take advantage of social media to provide or seek informal peer reviews; a 2022 study found that over 40% of bioRxiv authors responded to a survey saying they have received feedback on their preprints through social media.

Final thoughts

When you think about it, social media allows you to bypass traditional silos and gatekeepers. You can disseminate your research or discover collaboration opportunities in a few clicks.

Use it well and strategically, and it opens up many doors, allowing you to take off in the highly competitive research arena.