Features Social Media and Scientific Journals: A Snapshot Christina Sumners sist of random thoughts. There are a variety However, those terms have few defined of blog-hosting Web sites, or a person can boundaries. For example, Facebook has More people now have Facebook profiles create one on his or her own page. features of microblogging: users can write than live in the United States. Facebook Microblogging is similar to blogging but, “status updates” that post to their “walls” announced this statistic—that it has 350 as the name implies, on a smaller scale. and to their friends’ newsfeeds. Thus, this million users—around the same time that Users typically write very short messages, feature of Facebook functions very much the Oxford American Dictionary named updates, or thoughts. For example, Twitter, like Twitter. Users can also post a URL unfriend its 2009 word of the year. Unfriend the quintessential microblogging service, to their walls for friends to view, and this is defined as “to remove someone as a limits posts to 140 characters—the maxi- makes Facebook function like a social- ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as mum length of a cellular-telephone text bookmarking site. Facebook”. message. Perhaps the clearest way to define social Are journals joining the social-media When Facebook began, it was envi- media is to explain what it is not. It is not frenzy? sioned as acting almost as a yearbook, in simple sharing of information: The flow The short answer is yes, but determin- which students could look up their class- of information must go both ways, like ing exactly how different journals do so is mates and find some basic information a conversation, not a speech. Therefore, surprisingly difficult. about them, such as their hometowns and RSS feeds (which journals commonly use) To begin, social media refers to Web majors. The networking aspect of it comes are not really social media. Furthermore, content created by users and exchanged from the ability to add people as Facebook posting updates on a Web site, regardless with others. The phrase is associated with friends, who then have their friends, who of frequency and content, does not really Web 2.0, or the “second generation” of have their friends, ad infinitum. Facebook constitute a blog unless readers can inter- the Internet, which emphasizes collabora- has since exploded with new features, act (in some way) with the author, usually tion. With such an overarching definition, called applications, but the basic premise by leaving comments. what does social networking by a journal remains. LinkedIn is a similar site but with look like? Any social media sponsored by a more professional focus. Basic Efforts at Social Networking the publishers of a scientific journal? Only Social bookmarking is a way of sharing Using established social-networking Web those aimed at scientists? Perhaps the interesting things with others and using sites is a common, relatively easy way for social-networking features must be directly others’ lists to discover new information. a journal (or anyone else) to begin social related to the journal articles? For example, such sites as Delicious allow networking. (CSE now has presences on Furthermore, social media, a term often users to post the URLs of interesting Web Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.) Journals used interchangeably with social network- sites and then assign each one a “tag”—a tend to use the ones that are most popular ing, implies a heterogeneous mixture of short descriptor. People can then search in society at large—Facebook, Twitter, platforms and Web sites. Scholarly jour- for a word—genetics, for example—and and YouTube. The American Journal of nals most commonly use blogging, micro- the Web site will present a list of every Critical Care, the Archives of Neurology, blogging, social networks, and social book- site someone has tagged with the word BioMed Central, the Journal of Cell Biology, marking. genetics. Social bookmarking can also be the Journal of Experimental Medicine, the Blogging is derived from blog, which is a way of sharing a Web site with one or Journal of Histochemistry & Cytochemistry, a shortened form of Web log. A blog is an more friends. In addition, users can find Pediatrics, the New England Journal of online journal, or log of events, thoughts, new sites that they might enjoy on the Medicine, Science, and the beta version of feelings—or anything else the writer basis of an algorithm that compares their the Journal of the American Chemical Society chooses. It can be updated several times lists with other people’s (this is similar to (no doubt there are many others) have a day or once every few months. It can be how Amazon uses “customers who viewed Facebook pages. written by a single person or by a group of this also viewed . . .”). There are also A Facebook page can be thought of as people. It can have a specific topic or con- several social-bookmarking services spe- the profile of a business or organization— cifically for journal articles; such services for example, a journal. It must be cat- Christina Sumners, a graduate student in include Springer’s CiteULike (www.citeu- egorized as education, Web site, business, science and technology journalism at Texas like.org), Mendeley (www.mendeley.com), nonprofit, or one of several other options. A&M University, wrote this article while a and Nature Publishing Group’s Connotea Creating a page takes only a few minutes; Science Editor intern. (www.connotea.org). however, maintaining a good one tends

Science Editor • May – June 2010 • Vol 33 • No 3 • 75 Features Social Media continued to require continual work. In addition The different sites of a journal are often American Chemical Society was beta testing to basic information about the journal, a linked to each other; for example, a jour- a Journal Club (essentially a blog featuring journal’s page can contain photos, videos, nal’s Facebook page may direct users to its news, questions and answers, and tips from a calendar of events, links to other Web Twitter account and YouTube channel. other researchers). sites (such as the journal’s Twitter page or That might not reflect an overarching Elsevier has its own social-bookmarking home page), or pretty much anything else plan for social networking at each journal. site, called 2Collab (which has in the past that the creator of the page chooses. To Stewart Wills, online editor at Science, come under spam attacks and had to shut create a vibrant community, though, some- says he thinks that these efforts have often down temporarily for repairs). 2Collab one must periodically post new messages “grown organically” over time. allows users to create a library of refer- to the page’s wall. The messages might be Some journals use third-party services ences by importing bookmarks from a Web news related to the journal or the journal’s to add social-networking features directly browser or from Delicious, and references discipline, links to articles, or anything to their journal articles. For example, the can be imported and exported to RefWorks else that the moderator deems important Journal of the American Chemical Society and EndNote. or interesting. Facebook users can become offers readers of its articles the following Science Careers, an offshoot of Science, “fans” of a page (to receive updates on options, under the heading “Recommend offers two social-networking sites—one postings), post comments, and suggest the & Share”: e-mail, save, “Digg This”, send for those from “diverse backgrounds” and page to friends. to CiteULike, send to Delicious, post to one for those in clinical fields—and a Physical Review D does not have a Facebook, and post to Newsvine. Digg forum for general discussion of employ- Facebook page, but a Facebook group. and Newsvine are social-news Web sites— ment and career development in the sci- Groups have been part of Facebook for essentially, users submit links to stories, on ences. Science’s Web site also offers blogs years; pages are much newer. Groups are which others can vote or comment. on a variety of topics that include careers less independent than pages; they must Similarly, PLoS One has links in each but also science policy and reports from be begun by a person with his or her own of its articles to “share this article”, using scientific meetings. profile. Furthermore, people aren’t fans, Facebook, Connotea, CiteULike, Digg, The American Institute of Physics they are group members—maybe an unim- “regular” e-mail, and others. PLoS One recently launched AIP UniPHY, which is a portant distinction of terminology, but per- also makes its articles interactive directly social and professional networking site for haps, at least symbolically, indicating the on its Web site. Users can comment on and physicists. According to Chris Iannicello, level of involvement that users can have. rate each article and easily find referenced AIP UniPHY’s product manager, the When this article went to press, the articles from the included hyperlinks. site “enhances and accelerates the col- New England Journal of Medicine had three The New England Journal of Medicine laborative process among physical-science Facebook applications in beta testing: pop- embeds commenting and polls (related to researchers”. The site has a prepopulated ular articles, recent articles, and podcasts. the topic at hand) next to at least some profile of people who have published, in Applications are like little programs that of its videos. Science allows comment- the last 10 years, at least two articles list- operate within Facebook. ing on its daily news stories but not on ed in the Searchable Physics Information Twitter is also widely used: Science and its scholarly journal articles. Perhaps not Notices database. But membership is open Cell Press are two examples that are active- coincidentally, recent daily news stories are to anyone, so even novice researchers can ly involved. The Journal of the American freely available, but access to most journal find out “who we are suggesting are the Chemical Society has also experimented articles requires a subscription. primary players within specific scientific with its use. Cell recently implemented an interac- disciplines”, Iannicello says. The site is also The New England Journal of Medicine, tive approach to the viewing of articles designed with editors in mind: “I think Cell Press, and others have created on its Web site. All the citations are that AIP UniPHY can assist journal edi- YouTube channels, which feature video hyperlinks to the full listing of an arti- tors,” Iannicello says, “making their job of clips related to the topic of the journals. cle. Furthermore, readers can send their finding peer-review candidates easier.” Those pages are often difficult to find thoughts on the article (and even include The social-networking efforts of the simply by searching YouTube or Twitter, YouTube videos as part of their comments); Nature Publishing Group (NPG) far out- even with very specific search terms. It is the ones that the editors deem relevant are pace all those in terms of number of sepa- far easier to approach them from a jour- published in the comments section. rate platforms and in complexity. In addi- nal’s Web site. The Journal of Chemical tion to those mentioned above (Facebook Physics makes it especially easy for users: Advanced Efforts page and Twitter site), NPG runs property on its home page, under the heading “Web Journals are beginning to go even fur- in Second Life, an online virtual-reality 2.0 Tools”, users can access its pages on ther toward developing their own social- world; Connotea, a social-bookmarking Twitter, YouTube, Google Calendar, and networking tools. For example, when this site for scientists; Postgenomic, which so on. article went to press, the Journal of the collects and aggregates popular science

76 • Science Editor • May – June 2010 • Vol 33 • No 3 Features Social Media continued blog posts; Scintilla, which is similar to Postgenomic, but also gathers science sto- Definitions ries from mainstream media with science Delicious: a general social-bookmarking site video, podcasts, and job postings; Nature Digg: a social-news Web site where people submit links to stories Networks, a social-networking site for sci- EndNote: a computer program for managing references entists that includes forums, blogs, events, Facebook: a social-networking site and job listings; and Scitable, a network- Google Calendar: an online, potentially shared, and collaborative calendar ing site aimed primarily at students and Google Wave: an online collaboration tool professors. LinkedIn: a social-networking site popular with professionals With the tagline “Learn Science at Newsvine: a social-news Web site that gets content from users and from mainstream Nature”, Scitable takes the concept of news outlets social networking, already familiar to Podcast: a media (typically audio) file accessed over the Internet undergraduate students, and uses it to con- Postgenomic: a Web site that collects and aggregates posts on science blogs nect them to such resources as scientific RefWorks: a subscription-based online reference manager articles and experts willing to answer ques- Scintilla: a science-specific social-news site tions. According to its Web site, Scitable’s Scitable: a collaborative-learning Web site for genetics goal is to “fuel a global exchange of sci- Second Life: a virtual online world entific insights, teaching practices, and Twitter: a service for microblogging study resources”. As of early 2010, Scitable YouTube: a video-sharing site had information only on genetics, but its editors said that they plan eventually to expand it to more of the life sciences and Millennium Copyright Act protect the host he says. “I try to develop meaningful con- to target other audiences. of a Web site from liability for users’ post- nections among the young scientists and Scitable illustrates a difficulty in charac- ings that violate copyright laws. However, upcoming trainees. The connections that terizing journals’ use of social networks: Is the protection is subject to conditions, so will hopefully lead to breakthrough col- the site a part of the journal Nature, or is it it might be useful to consult an attorney, laborations that will enhance the body a loosely related spinoff? If the main audi- especially inasmuch as different countries of scientific research.” Still, Fernandez ence is undergraduates and their teachers, have different laws. It is also important to acknowledges that it can be difficult to what does it have to do with original sci- remember that a journal might be liable gauge success. “It’s hard to measure ROI entific research? Of course, because most for whatever its employees post on the site. [return on investment] in a social net- university science professors are practicing Given those concerns, the question work,” he says. scientists, this line becomes a bit blurry. becomes whether involvement in social Finally, an issue that is affecting society media is worth the difficulties. Perhaps one at large: As we move from disciplined Issues for Publishers and Editors way to approach the question is to think print media to a collaborative, democratic Several issues come into play in deciding about the goals of any social-networking approach to information, how do experts how, or whether, a journal should become endeavor. In other words, what does “suc- maintain their status as experts? Social involved in social networking. While the cess” look like? networking inevitably means giving up debate continues about how much social Looking at how or whether social media some control of the product and the brand media can or should be involved in schol- will support the mission of a journal is one to users, and this leads to some degree of arly publishing, here are a few things to way to measure success. Some journals unpredictability and risk. consider: seem to address this directly. For example, One major consideration is the workload Scintilla’s Web site gives Nature’s mis- Are Scientists Using Social Media? of the staff—is there money to hire some- sion statement and then says, “We think What about scientists, though—are they one specifically to coordinate social net- Scintilla helps us to achieve these goals [in using these tools, or other social-media working? If not, how should maintaining Nature’s mission statement].” sites, in their professional lives? What the journals’ social-networking site(s) be Jose Fernandez, who works on the social- types of features do scientists need or want? factored into the workload of a current staff networking aspects of Science Careers, says There has been little market research to member? All too often, monitoring and that he thinks his work does the same for answer that question, but anecdotally it moderating social-networking pages create Science. “I believe Science Careers benefits appears that many scientists are not using an unfunded mandate for people’s time. the mission of the journal Science by help- the tools that are available. In March 2007, Social media can also introduce new ing develop prominent new researchers Richard Apodaca, a chemist, titled a blog legal issues. Generally speaking, in the that will take the torch and continue con- post “Why I Still Don’t Use Connotea”. United States, the provisions of the Digital tributing world-class scientific research,” In a recent interview, Apodaca elaborated,

Science Editor • May – June 2010 • Vol 33 • No 3 • 77 Features Social Media continued saying, “I wasn’t really seeing what the fact, reporting scientific conferences on value added was” over more traditional Twitter (without prior permission by the Web Sites Mentioned reference-management software or even presenters) has been the cause of some • 2Collab: www.2collab.com the classic hard-copy-and-folders system. controversy, because scientists might not • AIP UniPHY: www.aipuniphy.org/ “What does it add to your productivity in want their work so widely publicized yet, portal/portal.aspx managing these references?” according to the article. • Amazon: www.amazon.com It seems that he’s not the only one won- Perhaps that use of the established • CiteULike: www.citeulike.org dering. David Crotty, executive editor of social-networking sites is part of why sci- • Connotea: www.connotea.org Cold Spring Harbor Protocols, commented ence-specific sites do not seem widely • Delicious: delicious.com (in a post to the Society for Scholarly popular. “There’s no point in duplicating • Digg: digg.com Publishing’s blog The Scholarly Kitchen) the functionality of bigger, stronger, more • Facebook: www.Facebook.com on the “lack of compelling reasons to partic- functional networks for a smaller commu- • google Wave: wave.google.com ipate” in scientific social-networking sites. nity—you lose the network effects and you • Mendeley: www.mendeley.com Crotty also noted his impression that biolo- don’t gain any new functionality,” posted • Nature Networks: network.nature. gists, at least, did not find such sites useful. Crotty on The Scholarly Kitchen. com Part of the problem is site developers’ The short answer to whether scientists • Newsvine: www.newsvine.com lack of understanding of the culture of use social media is that we just don’t know, • Postgenomic: www.postgenomic. science, Crotty said. “Any network that according to a post by Kent Anderson, com/index.php hopes to succeed must adapt to the culture publisher of the Journal of Bone and Joint • Science Careers: sciencecareers.sci of the community, rather than trying to Surgery, on The Scholarly Kitchen. encemag.org rewrite it,” he said in a blog post. Anderson added, “Yet, it seems scientists • Scintilla: scintilla.nature.com Scientists are wary of the term network- are finding value in social tools, and are • Scitable: www.nature.com/scitable ing, Apodaca says. For a site to work, he moving into social networking.” • Second Life: secondlife.com believes, it must have “social networking • The Scholarly Kitchen: scholar as a feature, not a destination”, inasmuch The Future lykitchen.sspnet.org as networking and collaborating over the Much debate has focused on whether • Twitter: www.twitter.com Internet tend not to be vital parts of a sci- social media will become more used in sci- • YouTube: www.youtube.com entist’s work on a daily basis. ence and scientific publishing as younger “You go into a specialty and that’s what people enter the profession. Some take you really care about,” says Apodaca. it as a given that these young scientists, for others. By the time they can offer “You’re not so much interested in general having grown up using social-networking useful contributions to a network, they science things.” programs, will expect to use them in their are likely to be too busy to spend much Still, millions of people—in myriad careers. Iannicello says that as younger gen- time on a network and will probably professions—are registered on Facebook. erations grow to the point of being gradu- be indoctrinated into the more tradi- Some of them are scientists. In a comment ate students, they will have an “expecta- tional ways of networking. posted to The Scholarly Kitchen, paleon- tion of a multitude of Web x.0 features to tologist Andy Farke said, “Among a sig- be available”, and it is important for his Who knows, though, what effect new nificant percentage of vertebrate paleon- team (and other creators of social media) technologies will have? Google Wave, a tologists, Facebook has become the social to “stay ahead of the curve in developing new collaboration application, has the networking medium of choice. It’s pretty these cutting-edge features”. Not everyone potential to shake up, once again, the con- widely used, by a diverse cross-section of is as certain, though, that the next genera- cept of social networking. the field.” tion of scientists will change the scientific This article has been a snapshot of what Other scientists use it, too: There are community’s use of social media. some journals in the United States and “users on the Fan Page [for Science Careers] David Crotty posted on The Scholarly Britain are doing with social-networking ranging from undergraduates to established Kitchen: tools. As technology evolves, the picture senior scientists,” Fernandez says. Early graduate students have the least is likely to change, so social networking is Twitter is also being used by the sci- to offer any social network. They something for editors around the world to entific community. An article by Laura haven’t yet done the research, so they monitor. Bonetta, a science writer and editor, in have little by way of results to com- Cell on 30 October 2009 discussed the use municate, they’re unlikely to be in Acknowledgments of Twitter by scientists. “Disseminating charge of setting up collaborations for Many thanks to Stewart Wills for his scientific information is a driving mission the lab and because of their inexperi- invaluable help in researching this arti- for many Twitter users,” wrote Bonetta. In ence, have the least practical advice cle.

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