Encouragement: Professional Blogging Pays Off!

Melissa Terras’ blog post “The verdict: is blogging or tweeting about research papers worth it?” provides graphic evidence that when academics actively tweet and blog about their research that research is more likely to be downloaded.

SO?

• Article downloads are important for tenure.
• Articles in institutional repositories are accessible to a wider audience than articles only available in subscription databases.
• Twitter and Blogs can be effectively used to increase awareness of articles that have been published and provide links to those articles.

Applications!

• Keep blogging!
• Blog posts that are intended for more than a personal audience should be tweeted (maybe I should use my twitter account for more than cyber stalking DHers, huh?).
• Consider adding a page to the blog dedicated to past publications and current research (in my case only the latter applies).

Have a great day and keep smiling! :)