Teaching social media to scientists

Abstract

It wasn’t so long ago that scientists had only a couple of ways to share their work with the world: publishing in a research journal or presenting at a scientific meeting. This often limited exposure to a relatively small sphere of scientists. Today, with carefully crafted posts on social media channels such as blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, scientists can now widely spread the word of their latest publication, share daily results from their laboratory, debunk shoddy studies, and even find collaborators. Even so, relatively few scientists embrace social media platforms as a tool for communicating their work, according to researchers at the University of Otago who recently published a survey of 587 academic scientists who use social media for professional purposes (PLOS One 2016, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0162680). Many of those scientists use social media tools primarily to communicate with other scientists, notes Kimberley Collins, the study’s lead author. “Some used it