Social Network & Research

The importance of Social Networks

Formerly, the profile of a researcher was private and somehow isolated, when working on a project. It was when an article was ready, or when a publication was about to be made, when links and connections with other researchers and colleagues were established.

Nevertheless, this profile is not suitable anymore, because nowadays research, and many other activities, have become very dynamics, and therefore researchers must adapt to this new situation.

One way of keeping in touch with other researchers, colleagues, friends,... is using Social Networks. Although they seem to be tools designed for sharing experiences, curiosities, interest,... the also can be used to share comments, investigations, results,... so the can be continuously discussed, commented, referenced,... 

There are some Social Networks, like Researchgate and Linkedin, that are specially designed for researchers and professionals. Facebook, G+ and Twitter can be also good tools for spreading knowledge, results,... if the information is well prepared and the audience is adequate and well selected.

For example, if I am working on a project, and I have stuck in a problem, or I am not able to have good conclusions from my results, I can use Researchgate. If I ask other users for their comments, a discussion can be stablished, and conclusions can be made quickly and even more precisely. This discussion can produce even more questions, or suggest new investigations,... so the project could grow more with the help of those interested colleagues than it would have grown if the project was held only by myself.

My opinion about Social Networks is that they are very strong and useful tools if they are correctly used and focused by the researcher. But they should be correctly managed, because the time spent on their usage shall not be too long, or the user will finally suffer Infoxication, as it was explained on a previous post.

Personal impressions about Research 2.0-University of Burgos

First, this course has been a good experience for myself. I was not used to access all the tools that have been displayed. Specially, I have found Blogger a good and personal way of showing the rest of the world some of the projects I am working on, my interest,... Not only that, Blogger also allows other uses to share their impressions about the posts I share, comment the displayed topics,... 

Lessons about infoxication were very interesting, and gave many advice on how to avoid that nowadays illness and its effects on Internet users. From my point of view, I did not used internet in an efficient way, and the tips given by those lessons are indeed helping myself with my everyday tasks as a researcher and engineer.

Finally, in order to avoid spending many hours updating web pages in search for news, visiting every Social Network I could be subscribed to, reviewing e-mail, and starting again, I am pleased to have been introduced to suites like Drive, Hootsuite and Symbaloo. Together, they are a good desktop that can help the management of the numerous tools, RSS sources and webpages. And in the end, they will help in increasing the level of efficiency of my work and researches.