Terese Bird, Learning Technologist & SCORE Research Fellow University of Leicester

University of South Africa, Pretoria, 13 June 2012

What works and what doesn’t workin research dissemination

What will we talk about?1. Collaborate and disseminate as you go ‘Closed’ doesn’t work Funder requirements Examples of sharing data along the way Examples of academics – ‘blogging plus’ Tools2. Open Research

Open research issues - affordability, inequality Research Impact is greater when we open it up Metrics from Leicester LRA Metrics from outside Leicester3. How to start

1.Collaborate & disseminate as you go

Cann, A., Dimitriou, K., and Hooley, T. (2011), p15

Does ‘closed’ work?Working together rather than in competition brings the

power of shared information and investigation.

ExampleThe Myelin Repair Foundation (MRF) was founded to address the inefficiencies

and structural barriers present across Multiple Sclerosis research efforts. These challenges included

• academic research labs working independently in expertise ‘silos’,

• widespread secrecy and safeguarding of research progress and knowledge,

• limited publication of research producing non-results,

and others. These longstanding coordination issues are exacerbated by the fact that such approaches to drug discovery and development are unsuitable for complex, multi-casual diseases like MS.http://blog.hbs.edu/hbsinov8/?p=1764

Image courtesy of Myelin Repair Foundation on Flickr

There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet. –Eric Hoffer

Funder Requirements

JISC now requires ‘disseminate as you go’ and ‘disseminate from day one’

“Dissemination informs the community about what you have developed and the benefits of using it” - JISC

How does one collaborate and disseminate as you go?

• Share findings as you go• Project website• Academic blog– Open research notebook– journaling what happens in practice– Recording encountered risks, different from the

original project timelines– Air new ideas, see reaction, discuss

• Invite to your site (Twitter, Google+, Facebook)• Share presentations on Slideshare

Example of releasing data midstream – speed of light

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/27676-cern-admits-anomaly-in-neut

Accelerated Research Collaboration Model in Medical Research

http://blog.hbs.edu/hbsinov8/?p=1764

Risks???

Risks• Stealing ‘but I might have stolen them to start with’. We

don’t always attribute.• Sharing simply not allowed- industrial funder.• Someone may misinterpret your idea, misuse your idea.

Even safety issues.• Social Sci – incorrectly attribute causality• Ethical – exposing data you shouldn’t expose• Steal your thunder just before you show your stuff• Is the user interested in half-baked stuff?• Only brownie points for journal articles, not blogs• We don’t want to see blogs as references, not peer-

reviewed

Positive examples – Alan Cann

Positive examples – Cristina Costa

What I did with SPIDER• Website• Blog Disseminate & collaborate• Online survey – baseline• Scoop.it – identify, curate, collaborate, disseminate• Data collection: Twitter, Weibo• Conferences• Slideshare

Draw readers to your project website

Tasks and Tools

Mendeley, Delicious, Google Docs, RSS Aggregator

WordpressEvernote

Wordpress, Twitter, Slideshare, Academia.edu, Flickr, Pinterest, LinkedIn

FacebookTwitterGoogle+LinkedIn

iGoogle DropboxScoop.it

Google+Wetpaint

2. Open Research

We cannot afford ‘closed’

–Princeton–Harvard– Elsevier boycott

UK Open Access Implementation Group Reports

The UK public sector already saves £28.6 million by using open access.

Both the public sector and the voluntary sector would see further direct and indirect benefits from increased access to UK higher education research publications. Already, more Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) organisations use open access than pay for subscriptions

The UK public sector spends £135 million a year, made up of subscriptions and time spent trying to find articles, accessing the journal papers it needs to perform effectively. Each extra 5% of journal papers accessed via open access on the web would save the public purse £1.7 million, even if no subscription fees were to be saved.

<http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/575/

Leicester Research Archive Example

• Traditional printed PhD thesis is read a total of 4 times over the life of the academic (avg)

• Leicester Research Archive: most theses are downloaded 10-40x monthly (avg)

• Top 10 LRA accesses in 2011 were PhD theses: – 1772 accesses for the number 1– 1584 accesses for the number 3

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). - Melissa Terras, UCL

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/04/19/blog-tweeting-papers-worth-it/

It’s all political

• REF doesn’t seem to reward the new models(?)

• UK Minister enlisting Jimmy Wales’ help to open research publications – efficiency & effectiveness

• White House petition for open access to research

3. How to do it? Follow the stars!

It’s in your hands!Thank you!

Cann, A., Dimitriou, K., Hooley, T. (2011) Social media: a guide for researchers. 15.