The Impact of Social Media in Research Publicity and Visibility

This study is on social media and its impact on research publicity and visibility. Social media has grown beyond its original purpose of connecting people all over the globe. Today, the ease of interacting with millions of social media users in a cost effective and real-time manner has given rise to the creation of highly engaging online content by users from diverse professional and personal backgrounds. In the past, knowledge constructs consulted by scholars were mostly in the form of printed or hard copies (books, newspapers, journals, etc), and although this format was instrumental in the development of knowledge generation and distribution since the advent of writing. But through the Internet, and from social media platforms like Facebook, Blog, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, Whatsapp, Youtube e.t.c. information can be searched anywhere in the world, and typically hundreds or thousands of pages can be found with some relation to the topic within seconds. Researchers are increasingly sharing their knowledge with colleagues as they present their papers in seminars and conferences. After publication, their contributions may then be cited by other scholars, including students. The researcher’s visibility does not solely rely on the number of publications they produce. Both academic researchers as well as their institutions are continuously being under scrutiny as they are rated and classified by independent reviewers