Science Intelligence and InfoPros

Below a digest of some discussions reported in 2 blogs:

• May 2009, Rest in peace RSS: It’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter. RSS just doesn’t cut it anymore. (…) Suddenly everyone and their dog was convinced RSS was dead and we should all move on.
• In early 2011 RSS still wasn’t quite dead. (…) To me, anytime someone says a tech is dead it usually means that tech is not very interesting to discuss anymore, or isn’t seeing the most innovative companies doing new things with it.
• April 2012 – RSS still wasn’t quite dead (…) There’s a veritable explosion of companies removing RSS from their products … for whatever reason. Usually because it doesn’t directly benefit the bottom line – they prefer proprietary formats
• RSS will never die because of a simple reality: power users. (…) RSS is here to stay for at least a while longer – all those people doing most of the sharing? A lot of their stuff comes from RSS.
• Twitter is not a replacement for RSS. Not by a long shot. It’s too busy! (…) Consequently, RSS offers bigger exposure to your content.
• Twitter seems to be the place to have conversations now rather then on blogs. That’s not to say blogs don’t have a place in both finding information and having discussions, but it would appear they’re being used for more reflective posts, which individuals can comment on, rather then short conversations involving lots of individuals

Teller, Swizec. RSS will never die. Zemanta Tech blog, April 26, 2012. Available from: http://www.zemanta.com/fruitblog/rss-will-never-die/ [Accessed 4th of May 2012]

Mulla, James. The role of RSS and RSS readers. FUMSI, 30th of April 2012. Available from: http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/manage/68689 [Accessed 4th of May 2012]

If you want people to find and read your research, build up a digital presence in your discipline, and use it to promote your work when you have something interesting to share. It’s pretty darn obvious, really:
If (social media interaction is often) then (Open access + social media = increased downloads).

Terras, Melissa. Is blogging and tweeting about research papers worth it? The Verdict. Melissa’s blog, Posted on 3^rd April 2012, Available from: http://melissaterras.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/is-blogging-and-tweeting-about-research.html [Accessed 18th April 2012]

Based on a new report by Joseph McKendrick.  The Digital Squeeze: Libraries at the Crossroads surveyed 730 public, academic, special, education, and government libraries in the US.

“Librarians report a levelling off in the use of Facebook and LinkedIn to connect with customers and the use of wikis and blogs is declining.  However, more of them are using collaborative tools including the sharing of web pages, subject guides, and the use of document-sharing, photo and video sharing web apps.

Libraries, unsurprisingly, reported an increased demand for ebooks, wireless connectivity and other technology tools and services.  More than one-third of the respondents reported that they spent more money on information technology hardware, software, and related IT services over the past year. 

More libraries are moving to the cloud for operational support and content storage.  26% of them are already offering e-readers, with one respondent stating that this activity will be an area of ‘extreme growth’.

Skelton, Val. Libraries, the digital squeeze and ebooks. InformationToday Europe, 12th of April 2012. Available from: http://www.infotoday.eu/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Libraries-the-digital-squeeze-and-ebooks-81910.aspx [Accessed 13th April 2012]

“Here at Comprendia, we’ve never advocated that Facebook should be recreated for scientists, as there are 700,000+ life science graduates in the US already using the application,* and they are likely already connected there to lab mates and colleagues. Rather, we should broaden our idea of the ‘social network’ to include any online community of scientists, not just those which are similar to Facebook. The value of social networks for scientists lies in faster access to information relevant to their research and the communities that are made more available by new tools. Here are 6 successful examples which can be used to understand scientific social communities. (…)

1. Facebook Pages & LinkedIn Groups. Scientists have used mailing lists and forums for years. Facebook pages and LinkedIn groups are a ’2.0′ version of them with the benefits of centralization and easier access to participants. Life science companies, most notably Life Technologies, have fostered social networks in the form of Facebook pages centered on a topic.
2. Twitter Hashtags. Scientists use Twitter to share scientific blog posts and news, to find friends and colleagues around a topic or event, and sometimes to vent about their situation. Hashtags, which are text identifiers for status updates on a topic, allow a Twitter social network to form around it…
3. ScienceOnline
4. True Social Networks. (…) ResearchGate’s has 1.4 million users, as we know that scientists don’t have time for frivolous endeavors, especially when they’re under the watchful eye of their Principal Investigator. As we noted in our post a year ago, there has to be a value for them to participate, and the successful ones center around research publications. BiomedExperts, CiteULike, ResearchBlogging, andResearchGate had the highest traffic in our quick study, and they all rely heavily on publications. I like to say that PubMed was the first social network for scientists.
5. Publication Sharing/Open Access. Related to the last point is a subject that requires its own mention as it transverses from proper social networks to desktop applications, Twitter, and even a movement to make research publications more accessible.Mendeley is the rock star of the publication sharing/open access genre, boasting 1.77 million users who are sharing 169 million publications. When we speak with life scientists at conferences or client visits, we often hear about the application even from those who are not strong believers in social media. Additionally, these applications have whetted scientists’ appetites for more open access to publications
6. Blogs.  “blogs were one of the first forms of social media for scientists.”  Blog aggregators such as ResearchBlogging orScienceSeeker feature hundreds of blogs and likely a comparable number of communities focused around individual research topics.

To read in Information Today Europe:

For the last five years the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research has been conducting a study about the use of social media in the 500 fastest growing organisations in the US (The Inc. 500.)  The first study, conducted in 2007, found that these companies were much more likely to have adopted blogs than those in the ‘traditional’ Fortune 500.

The latest findings show that the use of blogging in the Inc. 500 companies is declining for the first time. Blogging had declined to 37% from 50% in 2010. (…)

However, as blogging reaches maturity in these organisations, the use of other social media, including Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Mobile apps, texting, Twitter and YouTube, is growing.  74% of responding companies were using Facebook, and 73% using LinkedIn. (…)

Read further:

Val Skelton, A blog post about the decline of blogging. Information Today Europe Blog, 2nd of February 2012.

http://www.infotodayeurope.com/2012/02/02/a-blog-post-about-the-decline-of-blogging/

Or at least one social-technology tool in 2011, has shown a McKinsey study in November 2011.

Some findings:

• Companies are improving their mastery of social technologies, using them to enhance operations and exploit new market opportunities…
• Executives say that their companies are using them to increase their agility and to manage organizational complexity. Many believe that if organizational barriers to the use of social technologies diminish, they could form the core of entirely new business processes that may radically improve performance.
• Organizations use social tools for internal purposes but have also increased among those that use them for communicating with customers or for integration with partners and suppliers
• The most used tool is Social network (50%), followed by blogs (41%), vidéo (38%) and microblogging which stay marginal (23%)
• Adoption by Industries : HighTech, Telecom, 86% ; … ; Pharma, 74% ; … ; Energy: 62%

“Scientists generally criticize journalists for being over-simplistic, while journalists criticize researchers for being non-communicative. However, with the advent of Web 2.0, some researchers became more communicative by creating their own blogs. (…)

This article discusses the online relationships between science journalists and science bloggers.

The findings of this study show that science journalists do not generally see science blogs as valuable sources of information. At the same time, it confirms that some scientists use their blogs to circumvent traditional media“.

Colson, Vinciane. Science blogs as competing channels for the dissemination of science news. Journalism,  October 2011 vol. 12 no. 7, pp. 889-902.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1464884911412834

[Via @DavidGurteen ]

By the famous cartoonist Hugh MacLeod:

“

Earlier today I told everybody on Twitter and Facebook, that I’m leaving Twitter and Facebook.

Why?

Because Facebook and Twitter are too easy. Keeping up a decent blog that people actually want to take the time to read, that’s much harder. And it’s the hard stuff that pays off in the end.

Besides, even if they’re very good at hiding the fact, over on Twitter and Facebook, it’s not your content, it’s their content“

Plus on: http://gapingvoid.com/2011/08/19/its-not-my-content/

Using blogs and Twitter, drug maker shows how Big Pharma can communicate online, despite industry constraints. (…)

Eli Lilly and Co. can’t talk about drugs or diseases, nor share patient stories on its blog or Twitter account. (…) Despite the restrictions of the heavily regulated pharma industry, LillyPad managed to find its voice.  (…)

Until last September, the company was invisible on social media. Strict regulations and the company’s ties to the federal government made it wary about getting involved on social media (…)

Instead of worrying about what Lilly couldn’t say on social media, it concentrated on what it could.

Kueterman says the blog focuses on four topics: public policy, advocacy, corporate responsibility, and life at Lilly. And it’s working

Are people really interested in following a Big Pharma company on Twitter?

“Not a lot of people are,” Kueterman concedes.

But @LillyPad hits its key audiences: legislative and staff, the media, philanthropists, and key stakeholders in Indiana, where the company is based.

So far, it has gathered more than 4,000 Twitter followers. Kueterman and his team tweet two to three times each day.

Levco, Jessica. How Eli Lilly walks the social media tightrope. HealthCareCommunication, Online, posted on 26th of July 2011.
http://www.healthcarecommunication.com/Main/Articles/7218.aspx

The Internet is saturated with blogs on any topic imaginable. Even within the narrower subset of science blogs the amount of information is vast, and for readers it can seem that there are too many blogs to keep track of. (…)
The casual and self-regulatory nature of blogging has benefits and pitfalls for the science world. Blogs are simple to start, and easy to publish, but in order to be successful they require much more. Blogs require that invaluable resource of time. Time to produce high quality material, time to interact with the readers, time to learn the technology and web design in order to make sure the blog is appealing. The question becomes, do the benefits outweigh the cost? (…)
The blogosphere is a large community; however, bloggers with similar interests and audience bases are often connected in multiple ways. Blogs create a space where connections can be made easily and instantly through hyperlinks. (…)
Blogs are a low-cost way for anyone to publish information and make it available to a global audience. Science blogs are an alternative way for people to explore and learn about the latest trends and research. However, the potential of science blogs is overshadowed by the numerous other blogs which disseminate false or misleading information. The reader must be able to judge on their own the reliability of the blogs they read. (…)
Blogging improves science outreach by allowing authors, from graduate students to tenured professionals, to more directly and more rapidly interact with their peers and the rest of the population. Increasing communication channels through tools such as blogs builds a knowledge base that allows world-wide collaboration and active participation by the scientists, and ensures continual, immediate criticism of science research by both readers and writers.

Laksamee Putnam. The changing role of blogs in science information dissemination. ISTL, Spring 2011.
http://www.istl.org/11-spring/article4.html