Social media use in the research workflow

TLDR

The topic, emerging from the Charleston Observatory of the Charleston Conference, explores social media’s role in research. The authors conducted a major international survey of 2,000 researchers to investigate how social media are used throughout the research workflow. The survey found that social media are applied at every stage of the research lifecycle, with collaborative authoring, conferencing, and scheduling tools most popular; mainstream brands such as Twitter dominate, age is a weak predictor, humanities and social science scholars use social media most, and while traditional outlets remain core, institutional repositories and social media serve complementary dissemination channels.

Abstract

ABSTRACT The paper reports on a major international survey, covering 2,000 researchers, which investigated the use of social media in the research workflow. The topic is the second to emerge from the Charleston Observatory, the research adjunct of the popular annual Charleston Conference ( http://www.katina.info/conference/ ). The study shows that social media have found serious application at all points of the research lifecycle, from identifying research opportunities to disseminating findings at the end. The three most popular social media tools in a research setting were those for collaborative authoring, conferencing, and scheduling meetings. The most popular brands used tend to be mainstream anchor technologies or ‘household brands‘, such as Twitter. Age is a poor predictor of social media use in a research context, and humanities and social science scholars avail themselves most of social media. Journals, conference proceedings, and edited books remain the core traditional means of disseminating research, with institutional repositories highly valued as well, but social media have become important complementary channels for disseminating and discovering research.