Keeping up

Use of social media is growing in popularised scholarly communication. Organisations, institutes, and individual researchers often report their work and current issues e.g. on X or Facebook. Research projects and publications are gaining visibility through likes, shares, and comments – locally and worldwide.

Using Social Media for Professionals, University of Turku (intranet page)

Original publications distributed through different social media channels (for example ResearchGate) are protected by copyright. The researchers must take care of copyright issues when they share publications on social media sites. In many cases it is possible to check the copyright policies of journals and publishers in the SHERPA/RoMEO service or on the publishers' websites.

How Can I share it - information on publishers' policies

LinkedIn is a professional networking platform for showcasing work experience, education, and skills. Key features include:

• Networking: Connect with professionals and researchers; join academic and sector groups.
• Job Search: Find academic positions, research opportunities, and industry jobs.
• Content Sharing: Share updates and research articles; publish long-form content.
• Learning: Access LinkedIn Learning for professional and research skills.
• Company Pages: Follow universities, research institutions, and businesses for updates and opportunities.

Share your publications, access millions more, and publish your data. Connect and collaborate with colleagues, peers, co-authors, and specialists in your field. Get stats about views, downloads, and citations of your research. Ask questions, get answers, and find solutions to research problems. Find the right job using our research-focused job board.

Original publications distributed through different social media channels (for example ResearchGate) are protected by copyright. The researchers must take care of copyright issues when they share publications on social media sites. In many cases it is possible to check the copyright policies of journals and publishers in the SHERPA/RoMEO service or on the publishers' websites.

How Can I share it - information on publishers' policies

Creating academic profiles is highly beneficial for enhancing your visibility and ensuring accurate attribution of your work. Some authors have names that are similar to one another, or their names can appear in different ways in different publications. These academic profiles provide a unique identifier, maintain a consistent record of your publications.

• ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-based effort to provide a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. ORCID is unique in its ability to reach across disciplines, research sectors, and national boundaries and its cooperation with other identifier systems. Publications and affiliations can be synchronised from UTUCRIS to ORCID.  More information in UTUCRIS guide
• Citation databases like Scopus and Web of Science also have researcher profiles. These profiles are created automatically by algorithms, but researchers can verify and/or request changes to them.
• You can create a Google Scholar profile and also follow not only articles or references but also specific scholars.

• Academia.edu

  Academics use Academia.edu to share their research, monitor deep analytics around the impact of their research, and track the research of academics they follow.
• Google Scholar Citations

  Google Scholar Citations provide a simple way for authors to keep track of citations to their articles. You can check who is citing your publications, graph citations over time, and compute several citation metrics. You can also make your profile public, so that it may appear in Google Scholar results when people search for your name.
• H-Net

  H-Net is an international interdisciplinary organization of scholars and teachers dedicated to developing the enormous educational potential of the Internet and the World Wide Web.
• ResearcherID.com

  ResearcherID provides a solution to the author ambiguity problem within the scholarly research community. Each member is assigned a unique identifier to enable researchers to manage their publication lists, track their times cited counts and h-index, identify potential collaborators and avoid author misidentification. In addition, your ResearcherID information integrates with the Web of Science and is ORCID compliant, allowing you to claim and showcase your publications from a single one account. Search the registry to find collaborators, review publication lists and explore how research is used around the world!
• Scholar Universe

  COS Scholar Universe™ brings a world of research and scholarship to one easily searchable database. With 2 million profiles, it helps researchers and academics connect with colleagues with shared interests while expanding their networks to include previously unknown people working in related fields or in other areas of the world.
• Social Science Research Network

  Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences.

Blogs, vlogs, and interactive discussion boards can act as low threshold services for researchers and their debates. Scholarly communication is constantly speeding up, getting more direct and less peer-reviewed, as scholars and researchers around the world get to comment on each others' brand new ideas and inventions the second they are released online. Research groups and individual researchers describe and report how their work is progressing in these forums.

 Academic blogs can offer timely updates, critical reviews, and personal takes on recent developments. They often present complex ideas in an accessible manner, bridging the gap between scholarly articles and general understanding.

You can look for blogs for example in OpenEdition Blogs Catalogue.

Here a couple examples of academic blogs:

• Society for Scholarly Publishing's Scholarly Kitchen has the latest in scholarly publishing.
• For people interested in data analysis and the R language: R-bloggers.

Keep in touch with colleagues and specialists in your field with similar research interests! Both formal and informal communication is vital between people who are interested in the same things, share projects or, for example, use the same data stored in an open repository. Academic "break room conversations" offer opportunities to share information that might not get articulated in more rigid or formal scholarly communication.

You could even set up a journal club or a reading circle, where everyone reads a specific research article and then you can meet up an discuss its merits or possible shortcomings. There may be others in your specific field or subject who are interested in the same topics as you and eager to discuss them face to face.

Casual chats in informal settings often lead to spontaneous exchanges of ideas and information. These conversations can be a goldmine for discovering new perspectives and staying attuned to the informal currents within your field.

In addition to keeping up with your own discipline, it's also important to know what's happening in the politics of academic reseach. Scientific news pages keep you informed about major breakthroughs, funding announcements, and broad trends across different fields. They’re useful for understanding the wider impact of academic research and how it fits into the larger societal context.Here are some publications and sites where you can follow discussions on science and its policies.

EurekAlert!: An online science news service featuring press releases from leading research institutions.

Flipboard: A news aggregator and social network, wher you can catch up on the news you care about, read stories from around the world and browse the articles, videos and photos other people are sharing. To begin, pick a few topics and tap any of the tiles to begin flipping through your personal magazine.

Live Science: Focuses on news and discoveries across a variety of scientific fields.

Medium: A social journalism platform "where readers can find dynamic thinking, and where expert and undiscovered voices can share their writing on any topic". Medium is a hybrid collection of amateur and professional people and publications, or Medium's own blogs or publishers.

Nature News: Offers in-depth articles and news updates on a wide range of scientific topics.

New Scientist: Covers the latest news in science and technology, with an emphasis on how they affect society.

Scholarly Kitchen: A blog about "What's hot and cooking in scholarly publishing" by the Society for Scholarly Publishing.

Science Daily: ScienceDaily, founded in 1995, is a site for research news in healthcare, technical science, environmental and social sciences. Updated several times a day.

Science News: Publication and research news site focusing on natural sciences.

Smithsonian Magazine: Provides a broad perspective on scientific research and discoveries along with cultural and historical contexts.

TED: TED is a nonprofit organisation devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). It began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics – from science to business to global issues – in more than 100 languages.