Why do academics blog?

How can social media amplify your work?

Dr Inger Mewburn explains:

Inger:

“…apart from the fact that I credit twitter with my current job which is a great job and enabled me to move interstate and work In one of the best universities in the country – which is fantastic – the other really positive thing that happened is I wrote a paper with Pat Thompson called ‘Why do academics blog?’ and it’s become, I think at the moment, it’s the 3rd most read paper ever in ‘Studies in Higher Education’ which is a fairly prestigious journal and both Pat and i have been amused and amazed at the speed that it traveled up the ranking table, I think the one that’s ahead of it at the moment has been, you know, seven years it’s taken to get to that level and we’re just behind it and it’s only been out for 18 months so I think that what social media can do is actually amplify your conventional research metrics because marketing an academic paper is a little bit of a niche marketing prospect, there’s only a certain number of people in the world that are going to be interested in what it is that you’re saying and I think everyone here has spoken about entering those communities, being part of those communities – those communities are the audience and consumers of your work, as we know and that then has an effect on those conventional counting metrics because I know for one i can’t make my blog count in any of our research impact systems here in Australia, maybe in the UK would be different…”