Pros and cons of social networking for scientists

Post on 07-Apr-2017

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Sean Ekins

Collaborations In Chemistry, Fuquay Varina, NC 27526

Email: ekinssean@yahoo.com

Twitter: Collabchem

Senior Consultant

Since 2007

Chief Scientific Officer

Since 2008

Chief Science Officer

Since 2013

CEO, President, Co-Founder

Since 2012

CEO, Founder

Since 2015

Blogger

Since 2011

Consulting ADME/Tox,

drug discovery

cheminformatics

Grant PI, bringing in

funding, neglected disease

drug discovery research –

use cheminformatics

Facilitate science & SAB,

write grants, collaborate

Grant PI, rare disease-

Sanfilippo Syndrome

Write grants and

collaborate on rare and

neglected diseases,

cheminformatics

Blog about drug discovery

I work on diverse projects (drug discovery, grant writing etc.)

Need to make people aware that I am here and gain visibility for work

Different networks (neglected disease, rare disease)

Different audience backgrounds (cheminformatics, patients, investors)

Different needs (customers for software vs customers for consulting, vs VCs for investment)

Most of my links in one place

A single webpage is a starting point

Using software to help connect to others

Providing your science in a consumable assessible format

Using software / apps to assess use of your output

Downloads of papers, views, citations

What works and what does not in this space

Marketing vs Social marketing

Networking for connections

Visibility

Cost

Global Reach

Openness

Enhanced or new collaborations

Career changing

Bottom line – people can find you and your work

It’s a full time job

Once in – there is no reason for going back

Longevity / permanence of information

Law of unintended consequences

Frightening for the inexperienced

Bottom line – there are no free rides, you get out what you put in

LinkedIn – my only tool for a long time

Then it all exploded with a paper

iPhone

Antony Williams

Alex Clark

Williams et al DDT 16:928-939, 2011

Links to Slideshare etc.

Use to post links to blogs, slides etc.

Blog

Wiki’s

Mobile app development

Using a whole array of tools

Twitter

Slideshare

Figshare

Kudos

Pubmed Commons

F1000Research

App for rare and neglected diseases

ShareData and molecules

Inspiration:P4C2011Scio2012

Instigation:PA Dragons Den 2012

Crowdfunding visibilityPublications, posters, talks

biotech

Mol Informatics, 31: 585-597, 2012

ODDT

I put all slides on here

I put datasets and posters on here

Occasional I put preprints on figshare as well

I now like to publish in F1000Research

Several more PLOS, BMC papers..

Fewer totally closed papers..

My profile is increasing I think..

More followers on Twitter

Increased citations

Used to track and enrich papers

Takes a lot of effort

Need to select papers

Add summary, links etc.

Actions can impact views

A way to comment on work in pubmed and enrich

Collaborations started from tweets

And lead to this…

Michele Rhee MBA

Connected on Twitter

Helped us write paper

GoTo meeting with colleagues

managing collaborations funding

science

Introduct

ion to a

company

We had already

connected

Intro to

others

gave me CV

for a

postdoc at

Harvard

Every company needs a person engaging, mining and connecting

Highlight talks

Papers being published

Any interesting science from outside own network

Putting ideas out there

Try not to overload, keep tone professional,

How you would like to be treated.

Occasional analysis of how papers are used

Do not have to do anything once set up

Useful to check ‘cites’ and do searches, no frills

Highs.. When someone else blogs on our papers, journalist writes about work

When a rare disease parent finds you

When you start a new collaboration via Twitter

Lows.. When you get people stalking your science and writing really nasty things on blogs, Twitter etc.

Journalists that totally twist your words / waste time

When you realize that you still have >100 papers to summarize in Kudos

When you get introduced to a new tool and realize you have to repeat weeks of work that you have already done elsewhere

Multiple levels of tools

1 – data sources = Slideshare, figshare, blogs, journals etc.

2 – compilers = Google Scholar, Research Gate, Academia, GrowKudos

3 – tools that provide scores of output= altmetric, Research Gate

There are too many tools you need to use – adds to stress

Select carefully – many duplicate / overlap in function

Unclear benefits of some tools – time wasting

LinkedIn may not be enough

Poor design

Unclear whats in it for me

Spurious results

Barely use it..a couple of times a year – provide reprint requests – get many annoying email alerts

None of these people were my co-authors??

I do not know these authors

Do something:

If you are a new scientist starting out building your network and needing visibility

Because the sooner you start the easier maintenance will be

Do nothing:

If you are an older scientist, retired, with no time

If you really do not want to be visible

If you cannot face hours setting up, uploading papers, preprints, summarizing papers etc.

Fame and wealth Hard to determine if it helped with funding from NIH etc

Job offers Having a webpage / CV alone definitely has lead to consulting jobs

More free time I think maintaining all the tools suck up free time

More relaxed I am probably less relaxed because I wonder what I am missing or need to

improve

Still opportunities for new tools Make it easier on the scientist, integrate more of the functions, show clear

benefits of participating