11 - Social Networking

Although the Internet has transformed scholarly communication, Social Networking as such has been slow to take off within the academic domain. There are a number of possible reasons for this -

• Conferences and Scholarly journals are already excellent forms of networking
• Research groups tend to be narrowly defined and can readily communicate with one another using email
• In many disciplines researchers choose to keep their activities to themselves until they are ready to publish
• Social networking can be quite time-consuming!

Nonetheless if you use it sensibly social networking can be a way of hooking into new trends and enlarging your network of contacts.

Twitter

Known as a microblogging site Twitter can be an excellent means of keeping up with trends. Many organisations, publications and individual scholars now use Twitterfeeds to put out new material -

http://twitter.com/#!/NatureNews

http://twitter.com/#!/RichardDawkins

http://twitter.com/#!/sciblogsnz

http://twitter.com/#!/PublishersWkly

http://twitter.com/#!/McKQuarterly

http://twitter.com/#!/Massey_Uni_Lib

In the academic domain Twitter is sometimes used for a sort of informal system of peer-review of recently published articles - Peer review: Trial by Twitter

And there's also A guide to using Twitter in university research, teaching, and impact activities

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a rather more professional version of Facebook and is a way of keeping in touch with people but away from more personal spaces like Facebook as well as marketing your skills and experience to prospective contacts and employers. LinkedIn is gaining traction with some student groups at Massey.

MyPortfolio

MyPortfolio is a New Zealand based portfolio system that allows students to create and maintain a personal profile. It is used in some Massey courses and has potential for doctoral students wanting to introduce themselves and network within research communities.

Yammer

Yammer is a “enterprise based social network” that allows you to interact with people within your own organisation, based on your institutional email address.

Specifically Academic Social Networks

Academia

Mendeley

Both theses services allow you to create your own groups and share documents as well as showcase your own research. Don’t forget that in order for you to use your own publications within social networks you first need to get them onto the open web through Massey Research Online

Some thoughts on Web 2.0

Unless you are generally an early adopter of new technologies you will probably not gain a lot of research advantage out of participating in academic wikis, blogs or social networks.

"There is some debate about whether many of the web 2.0 services for researchers – particularly social network services – provide sufficient added value to stimulate widespread adoption. Our findings also indicate that few services have yet achieved the critical mass needed to achieve the network effects that stimulate pervasive use by particular communities or across the board." Research Information Network. (2010). If you build it, will they come? How researchers perceive and use web 2.0

And a Warning

Try to keep your professional social networking at a distance from Facebook and similar “personal” networks – if you want to keep in touch with someone you meet at a conference consider using LinkedIn rather than Facebook.