A forum sharing research papers results in an estimated $1.4 million in savings
At university, it was especially frustrating not having access to countless nutrition (and related) journals, despite my degree emphasis in nutritional science. Except for the absurd setup of publishing ownership, it is the main reason I want to see the open access movement catch on. Journals like the Public Library of Sciences are making big impacts on the existing publishing model.
Social media enables the open access movement, and a recent study about a medical forum that contained a section for research article sharing shows the significance. It estimated that for one year, the cost of savings (or loss to the publishers) was $1.4 million, just from one social platform, if the articles were estimated at a value of $30 each.
It is almost inevitable that information moves to a completely free distribution model since the broadness of the internet is simply too great to police.
Recommended Read: “Should You Be Tweeting?”
A good article by Laura Bonetta titled “Should You Be Tweeting?” on Cell recently highlights a few scientists who have found success in using Twitter to communicate with the public and connect with other scientists and journalists to keep up with research in their field, as well as why some are hesitant to join. Have a read and let me know what you think.
Human filtering versus search engines
Sometimes you are looking for information or photos and Google just doesn’t cut it. Most search engines still lack a semantic quality (machine understanding of language and context to improve search results), but social media gives us a network to help us find what we need. Here is a great example of this: http://ideasandthoughts.org/2009/10/05/when-search-isnt-good-enough/
Our networks are in essence an extension of our own minds; they can help us zero in on what we need in a huge amount of information, give us ideas that we haven’t thought of ourselves, and save us time and frustration in the process.
Why do people blog?
Here is a good summary of a recent study exploring factors influencing knowledge sharing practices on the web: http://www.shockmd.com/2009/10/06/why-blog/
Many people who enjoy helping others simply may not have been introduced to blogging software or online communities to join, or don’t yet see the potential in using these methods to pass on information.
Check to see if your desired moniker is available on many social media services
If you are just starting to dive into social media, you may be trying to decide on a good moniker to use consistently to identify yourself. Pick something too easy and not all sites will have it available. Something too difficult to understand and it may dissuade followers. Using your name and credentials may add credibility to your shared items and make you more personable. It is somewhat of an art to pick something unique that best represents you, and it would be very time consuming to manually check each service first to make sure your name isn’t taken.
Here is an easy way to check 130 social services at once: NameChk
Even the U.S. government is proactive with social media
When you think of the government, in general the words early adopter usually don’t come to mind. Yet more politicians and other governmental officials are using social media tools like Twitter to get their messages heard, and now the U.S. government has recently launched Apps.gov, introducing web tools to lower costs and improve communication.
Check out their lists of social media and productivity applications.
Education and social media
Occasionally, I will highlight how other fields utilize social media and how it is changing how we learn and work.
Recently, high profile news sites like CNN and the New York Times have written about an online University that is going bold with tuition free schooling called the University of the People.
University of the People (UoPeople) is the world’s first tuition-free, online academic institution dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education. The high-quality, low-cost and global educational model embraces the worldwide presence of the Internet and dropping technology costs to bring university level studies within reach of millions of people across the world. With the support of respected academics, humanitarians and other visionaries, the UoPeople student body represents a new wave in global education.
The Times article shows the vision:
“The idea is to take social networking and apply it to academia,” said Shai Reshef, an entrepreneur and founder of several previous Internet-based educational businesses. “The open source courseware is there, from universities that have put their courses online, available to the public, free. We know that online peer-to-peer teaching works. Putting it all together, we can make a free university for students all over the world, anyone who speaks English and has an Internet connection.”
A CNN description further demonstrates how Reshef “gets it”
“We are fitting the current culture into the academic culture.”
“A recent study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education found that “on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”
Education is changing and will continually become cheaper as information becomes more free and available, and formal schooling saves by shifting to online mediums.
*It should be noted that the University may not receive accreditation, but nonetheless represents a change in the educational landscape, giving those an opportunity to learn who otherwise could not. As more schools try this method, we will likely see a forced recognition of the validity of this type of learning.
What is Social Media and why use it?
Social media updates to your inbox with NutShellMail
Filed under: Single-tasking, Social Media (General), Using Email
If you are like me, you probably live in your inbox. My email is my hub; many things flow through it daily. Sometimes I can’t hang out on Twitter all day, but i’ll never miss an email check. So why not Twitter from my email?
NutShellMail is just the right tool for this, and brings Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn updates right to your inbox. It lets you select exactly when and how many emails you will receive (any hour(s) of the day and any day(s) of the week). It organizes your replies, direct messages, new followers, new unfollowers, and the latest posts from news feeds from each site. And you can directly handle all of these right from your email without visiting each site.
Getting people online is paramount to social media’s success
A recent article about the different classes of people who adopt new technologies at different rates brings up an obvious but important point: the potential of social media will not be realized unless enough people actually use it.
The article links to this one describing some of the reasons why getting scientists online and interacting is so difficult. Some are skeptical, some are overly independent, and some simply don’t realize the potential. Without leaders taking the initiative and risks in these innovations, the nutrition field would fail to keep up with the inevitable changes that others do take advantage of.
This blog will highlight leaders in the nutrition field in hopes of showing how they better the field overall with their creative use of Web 2.0 technologies.
For the benefit of human knowledge, we must begin dropping asocial barriers and convincing those to experiment with new learning methods. With an increasing specialization from rapidly growing research fields, we need to leverage collaborative technologies to augment our human limitations.
It all comes down to taking the time to show those who are slow to adopt social media tools their potential in changing healthcare and human knowledge.
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Join the Nutrition 2.0 FriendFeed room to further discuss these topics: http://friendfeed.com/nutrition20 -
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Join the Nutrition 2.0 FriendFeed room to further discuss these topics: http://friendfeed.com/nutrition20 -