2019, Number 4
How to disseminate scientific knowledge through social media
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Language: English/Spanish [Versión en español]
References: 4
Page: 241-242
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The traditional way of disseminating scientific knowledge has been through its oral or written transmission, the latter in books or specialized magazines.
Today, in the age of social networks, there is immense competition for a manuscript to be recognized. In 2014 alone, there were about 34,000 journals in the scientific world, with 2.5 million articles. It is not possible to read everything available, so an easy and effective way to disseminate what we are interested in reading is through social networks.1
It has been suggested that a shorter title increases the number of readers. Other tips are to propose a concise title and to consider that keywords are used to search articles according to the topic of interest.2
It is advisable to send the manuscript to those we consider to be our peers, preferably including a link to the article; this can be done through our page or by email.2
Some institutions have their page or press offices, where you can send the abstract and the link to the article.
A greater number of readers have registered when the author uses different social networks; this has more impact and can also generate a chain of discussion. Some journals use the Altmetric platform, proposed as an alternative to the impact factor; the data sources for this indicator are social networks, including Twitter and Facebook. The platform scores the article and allows you to see the number of downloads, views, comments, whether it has been saved in a reference manager, etcetera.2,3
If you use Twitter, it is suggested to use #hashtags related to the central theme of the article, tag other colleagues, and don't stop posting on that network. You can also open threads for discussion; you have more visibility if you add a link to the article or magazine where it can be consulted.2
On Facebook and LinkedIn you can do something similar to Twitter, share with colleagues, friends and related discussion groups.2
Ebrahim et al. suggest that a single sentence be used that reflects the author's research and that that sentence be put everywhere. If you have your page, make an effort to keep it up to date, and don't forget to include the links in the manuscripts or journals where it is published. The same author suggests starting a blog or wikis to inform about the research, if they are in open access, they can upload the articles to platforms like ResearchGate.4
In this way, I invite you to change the way we transmit and share the knowledge you generate so that it is available to everyone.
REFERENCES
AFFILIATIONS
1 Editor, Cirujano General. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5635-5845