Twitter for publicizing your research

Category: Academics

Infinite time and energy is spent to perfect the final draft of a research article. Technically, the sand stops running out in your publishing hourglass only when the final version of your article is published in a journal. However, it is foolish to expect that your article will be noticed after simply getting it published, because millions of articles are published in today’s competitive academic field. Several wise and weathered researchers have devised new ways to getting noticed. Twitter is the quickest and the easiest way of attracting attention. Here are a few #knowhow for amateur tweeters: Create your own network To start with, you need to seek out to your existing contacts (colleagues). Start following the people you know first, then move on to looking for researchers in the same subject area. Exchange your twitter information with the people in your department. You might be surprised at how many around you already have a Twitter account. Your colleagues with similar or same research interests are possibly the ones who will be kind when reviewing your work and probably cite your work. Follow established Twitteratti from the scholarly publishing world Commonly, you will find a limited number of twitter followers because it takes considerable time and strategizing to build an enviable number of followers. This is a major obstacle for new users; but there is a solution to it. Search the prominent Tweeters from your field and start following them. If not directly, you can at least indirectly reach out to the hundreds, thousands, or millions of followers the Twitteratti have. This can be done by conversing with these people and offering links to your research if they are interested in it. You can also get your comments or work retweeted by people who have a stronger presence than you on Twitter. Don’t be overzealous and badger someone to look at or retweet your work, because that may backfire pretty quickly and nastily. Be patient and invest some time in the opposite person before you expect them to do something for you. Select a journal that actively shares on Twitter Several journals are active on Twitter. The latest from the ACS and NATA journals are regularly updated on Twitter. The journal “Methods in Ecology and Evolution” literally requests authors to submit a 120-word “tweetable” abstract. If your work is published by one of these journals, then rest assured that your work will be published on twitter and your study will reach to the thousands of loyal followers of the journal. You can also tweet your study at other journal pages where relevant material has been published, but avoid spamming. Start tweeting! Twitter does not work at the flick of your magic wand. And, unlike Google, there are no set relationships between Twitter mentions and citations. But, spending a few seconds and sharing a link to your paper may result in multiplied new readers, which can only be an advantage for you and your research.