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\begin{document}

\title{Social networking -- A springboard for early career researchers?}


\author[ ]{Bálint Botz}
\author[ ]{Authorea Reddit}

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We can consider ourselves lucky. We live in a ,,dreamtime'' of abundant
and easily accessible knowledge, the importance of which is hard to
overestimate. The advent of the internet democratized the availability
of information, and made long-distance communication essentially free.
Before, even simple tasks like finding academic papers meant browsing
through volumes of reference works, often only to find that the article
of interest is only available through costly interlibrary loans. The
chance of never stumbling upon something that could have been useful was
in no small part a matter of luck. Interacting with researchers and the
public was infrequent and limited. The digital revolution eliminated
these constraints -- but there are new challenges ahead.\\

The way scientists are doing things has fundamentally changed, yet the
\emph{status quo} and the inequality of the academic landscape is
largely unaffected. Papers published in the so-called ,,glamour
journals'' are on average somewhat better, but tend to get several
magnitudes greater number of citations than those published in more
modest periodicals. Though the accessibility of the top and mid/low-tier
journals is now basically the same, yet the
\href{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect}{Matthew effect} of
science still persists. The dramatic increase of research activity is at
least partially responsible for this. For example in 2015 about twice as
many articles were indexed in PubMed, as in 2005. Since the amount of
information is overwhelming, scientists need to go out of their way, and
seek unorthodox ways to increase the visibility of their research, The
widely used ,,publish or perish'' phrase is now almost obsolescent --
without using novel means to stand out of the crowd one can easily
publish \emph{and} perish.\\

Research published by the top dogs of academic publishing is made sure
to get the limelight, by promotion through e.g. popular science news
sites, accompanying editorials, and influential newsletters. However,
less prestigious venues usually don't have the same resources. Even if
you are a really successful scientist, chances are that most of your
papers won't end up in the elite journals. This means that to scientists
need to go DIY, take action, and reach out towards their~audience - and
this is where social networking sites can be game changers.~\\

Effective use of social networking services certainly goes beyond
posting selfies with posters and blurry images of ~the keynote speech.
All the different services have their own strengths and weaknesses so
finding the best way to your audience requires some experimentation.
Twitter for example is selective if not aristocratic, having a handful
of key influencers at the top, and a vast number of users with modest
followership. So unless you have influential followers to boost your
visibility, your tweets will likely to remain unnoticed regardless their
quality. However twitter is great for learning how to be succinct -- 140
characters really isn't much after all. In contrast, reddit is more
``democratic'': find a relevant subreddit for your content, submit, and
wait for the collective decision of the community. Only the quality of
your submission matters, its irrelevant whether you have just registered
or you have a 20-times gilded account with a karma of 1M. But what if
your article would be too technical to follow for a broader audience?~
Do what the top journals do -- write a short perspective piece about it,
highlighting the main findings and importance of your study using
layman's terms, give it a expressive title and share it as a blog post
(e.g. medium is a good venue for this).\\

Unfortunately, undergrads/grad students are rarely bombarded by requests
to deliver keynote speeches at conferences at sunny resorts Thus, junior
researchers should embrace alternative ways to connect with other
scientists working on their field, and professional networking sites
like Researchgate or Academia.edu can be of great help. These sites make
it easier to follow the activity of other researchers, share paper,
presentation, or raw data, ask/answer technical questions, review papers
and preprints, and ask others to scrutinize yours -- so all in all
interact with your peers, hone your communication skills, and if all
goes well establish collaborations.~\\

In summary: social networking sites (both academic and of general) offer
some much needed leverage for early career scientists, spark
collaborations, and can reduce the infamous Matthew effect in science.
The scientific community should utilize these non-traditional forms of
outreach more actively, which should be reflected by the graduate school
curriculum as well.

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