The Benefits of Utilizing Social Media for Dissemination of Scholarly Content
Social media use has soared in recent years with over half of the world population active on at least one social media service for over 2 hrs a day [
1]. Although Facebook (Meta Platforms) and YouTube (Google) remain the most used by the general public, Twitter is one of the most popular platforms for physicians and scientists [
2,
3]. In fact, nearly 10-20% of life science researchers report using Twitter, with even greater participation by researchers in the humanities and social sciences [
4,
5]. Twitter’s widespread use among scientists, particularly early-career scientists, appears to be driven by the platform’s ability to rapidly reach a large audience and disseminate information to other researchers. This becomes an effective means of increasing name-recognition within research fields beyond conferences and symposia. This feeling is relatable for us at many scientific annual meetings, especially a professional research group like the Orthopedic Research Society, when meeting a new colleague for the first time and exclaiming “It’s so nice to finally meet you in real-life; I follow you on Twitter”. Personally, in addition to being active on these platforms ourselves, we have witnessed the widespread use of Twitter within the broader orthopedic and musculoskeletal research community.
Some of these professional uses include announcing funding and promotion updates, seeking career advice, and talking about difficult professional situations. More scientifically, we have used Twitter for surveying topics of interest at upcoming scientific meetings, networking, collaborating and promoting the latest research publications written by ourselves or our research laboratories. In particular, promotion of a publication on Twitter and other social media has become increasingly important for driving article discussion and visibility, both in preprint or peer-reviewed format. This speedy recognition, especially in the era of preprints, can be particularly rewarding for researchers and journals compared to traditional bibliometrics that can take months to years to generate and change including author citation numbers, author h-index, and journal impact factor [
6]. Due to its widespread usage in orthopedic research, throughout the text we mainly focus on curation of Twitter posts, their dissemination and analysis of their impact on an author’s bibliometrics. However, it’s important to note that these same principles covered for Twitter are highly relatable to other social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Mastodon, etc.
Individual bibliometrics (author citation numbers and h-index) have been used as key metrics of research quality, and high bibliometrics often translate into prestige and career advancement. However, discussions around using alternative metrics (aka “altmetrics”, or the Altmetrics Attention Score), founded in 2011, as an additional marker of research impact, continues to be widely debated and researched. The Altmetric Attention Score is automatically updated and weighted to track online media attention of scholarly works, for example via mention in a social media posts, news articles, or policy documents [
7]. Due to rising popularity, the Altmetric Attention Score is routinely published alongside journal articles on the publisher’s website. These factors, and the increasing use of social media over time, have led to new research investigating altmetrics as a reliable indicator of traditional bibliometrics.
Emerging evidence suggests that social media (quantified by altmetrics) can have a significant and lasting impact on a researcher’s recognition and the impact of their scholarly works. For example, top journals in the research fields of sports science [
8], pathology [
9], and radiology [
10] all demonstrated significant positive correlations between citations and Altmetric Attention Scores (R = 0.20 - 0.771), although the strengths of association varied. In addition, all three studies reported Twitter as the predominant online source contributing to each article’s Altmetric Attention Scores. Recently published results by Halvorson et al. demonstrated similar trends between Twitter usage and citations within 17 orthopedic journals from 2018.For example, the authors found that twitter mentions, journal impact factor, and non-open status of the journal were all significantly associated with greater citation count [
11]. In contrast, analysis of correlations and Altmetric Attention Scores from journals in other fields, such as rheumatology [
12] and biology [
13], showed no significant and weak correlations (R = 0.004 - 0.12). Although these data suggest that post-publication social media promotion of scholarly articles, especially via Twitter, can influence traditional metrics of success and impact, correlations vary widely based on scientific field, type of journal (i.e., impact factor), type of article (technical vs. original), and timeframe post-publication. More specifically, on average articles received higher citations and Altmetric Attention Scores if they were technique-based (versus original research) [
14], published in a journal with its own social media account [
15,
16], and included comments and graphical abstracts [
17].
Based on these findings in other fields, the ORS Social Media Committee (ORS SMC) currently is investigating the strength of correlation between article citations and social media use within JOR and JOR Spine published articles and the greater ORS community. Wiley and Sons, Inc. staff members and the ORS SMC have helped create and streamline @JOrthopRes and @JORSpine Twitter handles run by editorial staff, who routinely post newly accepted journal articles on Twitter (#ManuscriptMonday) and help submitting authors join social media and create graphical abstracts to personally promote their work online. Due to the growing role social media appears to play in disseminating and highlighting scholarly work, in the next section we detail steps to construct and analyze content on Twitter and other emerging social media platforms for maximum engagement.
Conclusion and Future Directions
All media, including social media, has the potential to broadly reach and inform the public about research and to decrease disparities. For the ORS and JOR, social media can assist in accomplishing our mission of creating a world without musculoskeletal limitations. Currently public outreach for musculoskeletal diseases using social media is limited and will require not only a critical mass of online musculoskeletal researchers but one that has a strong unified voice. This community effort will be critical to informing all audiences, including elected officials and members of the public, on the burden of orthopedic diseases and importance of research funding. We, therefore, encourage all researchers in our community to develop a strong social media presence for their research. To help our community initiate these efforts and maximize impact, we have recommended musculoskeletal social media platforms and channels to engage with, along with their strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, social media is a tool to enhance the timely and truthful dissemination of orthopedic research findings and news.
Author Contributions
All authors contributed to the literature review, figure creation, drafting, revising, and approval of this manuscript.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the ORS social media committee and staff liaisons, Amber Blake and Natasha Prosek for their assistance. The authors would like to Dr. Marjolein van der Meulen (ORS President) and Dr. Meghan Mcgee-Lawrence (Advocacy Council Chair) for critical review of this manuscript. Dr. Evan Buettmann was supported by the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) through Cooperative Agreement with NASA (NNX16AO69A). Dr. Kelsey Collins was supported by NIAMS (Grant K99AR078949).
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