Social media in scholarly communication : a review of the literature and empirical analysis of Twitter use by SSHRC doctoral award recipients

This report has been commissioned by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to analyze the role that social media currently plays in scholarly communication as well as to what extent metrics derived from social media activity related to scholarly content can be applied in an evaluation context. Scholarly communication has become more diverse and open with research being discussed, shared and evaluated online. Social media tools are increasingly being used in the research and scholarly communication context, as scholars connect on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter or specialized platforms such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu or Mendeley. Research is discussed on blogs or Twitter, while datasets, software code and presentations are shared on Dryad, Github, FigShare and similar websites for reproducibility and reuse. Literature is managed, annotated and shared with online tools such as Mendeley and Zotero, and peer review is starting to be more open and transparent. The changing landscape of scholarly communication has also brought about new possibilities regarding its evaluation. So-called altmetrics are based on scholarly social media activity and have been introduced to reflect scholarly output and impact beyond considering only peer-reviewed journal articles and citations within them to measure scientific success. This includes the measurement of more diverse types of scholarly work and various forms of impact including that on society. This report provides an overview of how various social media tools are used in the research context based on 1) an extensive review of the current literature as well as 2) an empirical analysis of the use of Twitter by the 2010 cohort of SSHRC Doctoral Award recipients was analyzed in depth. Twitter has been chosen as one of the most promising tools regarding interaction with the general public and scholarly communication beyond the scientific community. The report focuses on the opportunities and challenges of social media and derived metrics and attempts to provide SSHRC with information to develop guidelines regarding the use of social media by funded researchers as well support the informed used of social media metrics

Scholarly use of social media and altmetrics : a review of the literature

Social media has become integrated into the fabric of the scholarly communication system in fundamental ways: principally through scholarly use of social media platforms and the promotion of new indicators on the basis of interactions with these platforms. Research and scholarship in this area has accelerated since the coining and subsequent advocacy for altmetrics—that is, research indicators based on social media activity. This review provides an extensive account of the state-of-the art in both scholarly use of social media and altmetrics. The review consists of two main parts: the first examines the use of social media in academia, examining the various functions these platforms have in the scholarly communication process and the factors that affect this use. The second part reviews empirical studies of altmetrics, discussing the various interpretations of altmetrics, data collection and methodological limitations, and differences according to platform. The review ends with a critical discussion of the implications of this transformation in the scholarly communication system

Is Any Social Media Publicity Good Publicity? The Case of @RealPeerReview and Altmetrics

<div>People familiar with the Twitter account @RealPeerReview might associate it with online cultural wars, representing the “alt-right” side of that war. According to Nagle (2017), the other side is the “identitarian privilege-checking left” (p. 75) whose main preoccupation is “gender fluidity and providing a safe space to explore other concerns like mental ill-health, physical disability, race, cultural identity, and ‘intersectionality’” (p. 69). The @RealPeerReview Twitter account, associated with such online personalities as Milo Yiannopolous and Dr. Jordan Peterson, “publishes the titles and abstracts, sometimes with funny quotes, of absurd academic papers typically from cultural studies or theory-based journals, on everything from feminist analysis of glaciers to fat masculinities” (Nagle 2017, p. 84). </div><div>In this paper, we take a deliberatively different framing to this phenomenon. Instead of viewing @RealPeerReview as a vehicle engaged in online culture wars, we study it as a revelatory case of contemporary research dissemination. Even though the dissemination is mostly negative, @RealPeerReview still popularizes a myriad of scholarly publications. </div><div>Assessment of scholarly impact has traditionally focused on citations in scientific articles, but recently other types of metrics have emerged (e.g. Sugimoto et al, 2017). Altmetrics is one of the prominent new metrics, measuring attention of research articles in social media outlets. We find that @RealPeerReview constitutes to a majority of the social media attention to many of the linked papers. We discuss whether any publicity is good publicity, as the old proverb claims, and provide questions for the future application of Altmetrics in research practice.</div><div><br></div><div><b>References</b><br></div><div><br></div><div>Nagle, A. (2017). Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right. Winchester, UK: Zero Books.</div><div>Peterson, J. (2017). Jordan Peterson: Professors are Embarrassed when you Read their Papers. PhilosophyInsights. [YouTube video] Retrieved from <a href="https://youtu.be/D3sewd_NPoA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3sewd_NPoA</a></div><div>Sugimoto, C. R., Work, S., Larivière, V., & Haustein, S. (2017). Scholarly use of social media and altmetrics: A review of the literature. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 68(9), 2037-2062. doi:<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.23833">10.1002/asi.23833</a></div><div><br></div

Differential Labeling of Myosin V Heads with Quantum Dots Allows Direct Visualization of Hand-Over-Hand Processivity

The double-headed myosin V molecular motor carries intracellular cargo processively along actin tracks in a hand-over-hand manner. To test this hypothesis at the molecular level, we observed single myosin V molecules that were differentially labeled with quantum dots having different emission spectra so that the position of each head could be identified with ∼6-nm resolution in a total internal reflectance microscope. With this approach, the individual heads of a single myosin V molecule were observed taking 72-nm steps as they alternated positions on the actin filament during processive movement. In addition, the heads were separated by 36 nm during pauses in motion, suggesting attachment to actin along its helical repeat. The 36-nm interhead spacing, the 72-nm step size, and the observation that heads alternate between leading and trailing positions on actin are obvious predictions of the hand-over-hand model, thus confirming myosin V's mode of walking along an actin filament

Fear of (re)injury and return to work following compensable injury: Qualitative insights from key stakeholders in Victoria, Australia

Background: Return to work (RTW) is important for recovery post-injury. Fear of (re)injury is a strong predictor of delayed RTW, and therefore much attention has been given to addressing injured workers' fear beliefs. However, RTW is a socially-negotiated process and it may be important to consider the wider social context of the injured worker, including the beliefs of the key people involved in their RTW journey. Methods: This paper involves data collected as part of a wider study in which semi-structured interviews explored RTW from the perspectives of 93 key stakeholders: injured workers, GPs, employers and insurance case managers in Victoria, Australia. Inductive analysis of interview transcripts identified fear of (re)injury as a salient theme across all stakeholder groups. This presented an opportunity to analyse how the wider social context of the injured worker may influence fear and avoidance behaviour. Two co-authors performed inductive analysis of the theme 'fear of (re)injury'. Codes identified in the data were grouped into five categories. Between and within category analysis revealed three themes describing the contextual factors that may influence fear avoidance and RTW behaviour. Results: Theme one described how injured workers engaged in a process of weighing up the risk of (re)injury in the workplace against the perceived benefits of RTW. Theme two described how workplace factors could influence an injured workers' perception of the risk of (re)injury in the workplace, including confidence that the source of the injury had been addressed, the availability and suitability of alternative duties. Theme three described other stakeholders' reluctance to accept injured workers back at work because of the fear that they might reinjure themselves. Conclusions: Our findings illustrate the need for a contextualised perspective of fear avoidance and RTW behaviour that includes the beliefs of other important people surrounding the injured worker (e.g. employers, family members, GPs). Existing models of health behaviour such as The Health Beliefs Model may provide useful frameworks for interventions targeting the affective, cognitive, social, organisational and policy factors that can influence fear avoidance or facilitate RTW following injury