Caroline Halford, Publishing Manager at Adis, reflects on the ways in which social media and digital features can maximise the impact of research publications.

Recorded 1 March 2017 at a MedComms Networking event in Oxford. Produced by NetworkPharma.tv

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ABSTRACT:

Healthcare publishers, such as Adis, are increasingly recognising the importance of social media, and encouraging authors to disseminate their work through social media channels where it is more likely to be seen, shared, downloaded by peers, and picked up by web-crawlers for indexing by search engines.

Using examples to demonstrate the impact of social media dissemination on the reach of articles published by Adis, Caroline Halford shows that twitter activity by authors within the first days and weeks of publication is clearly associated with an immediate boost to downloads and shares – though its longer-term impact on citations is less clear. Several studies suggest that a short title that captures the key results of a piece of research can increase the impact of publication. Sharing the work on multiple platforms can also be highly effective, particularly when activities are coordinated, for example to tie in with a major congress. Press releases published simultaneously are more likely to be picked up by news outlets and bloggers, while a social media strategy of sharing key data with hashtags and infographics can lead to a snowball effect in driving interest.

Combining social media with digital features can also help to attract readers. Today’s healthcare professionals have little time to browse, and tend to look for key points and easy-to-understand figures and tables. Recognising this, many journals are now publishing digital features, such as video abstracts and infographics, alongside potentially high impact articles, to facilitate social media shares.

Written by Penny Gray, Freelance Medical Writer

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We are building a library of free webcasts, like this one, for the global MedComms Community and others at http://www.networkpharma.tv and we’d welcome your suggestions for new topics and speakers.

Full details of this MedComms Networking event are at http://medcommsnetworking.com/event86.html

Caroline’s presentation (PDF format) is at http://medcommsnetworking.com/presentations/halford_010317.pdf

Caroline’s Linkedin page is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-halford-09295a17/

More about Adis can be found at http://www.springer.com/gp/adis

Filming and technical direction by Mario Crispino, Freelance Cameraman & Editor

[For the avoidance of doubt: this video is intended to be freely accessible to all. Please feel free to share and use however you like. Cheers, Peter Llewellyn, Director NetworkPharma Ltd and Founder of the MedComms Networking Community activity at http://www.medcommsnetworking.com]