Futurity.org is a scholarly research aggregate that provides accessible summaries of research news from universities in the US, Canada, and UK. Current news is presented by topic, tags, and readers can browse by school. While scholarly articles are not always easily understood by most readers, Futurity’s editors provide clear explanations and links to the articles (which not necessarily open access). In the movement to connect interested readers with reliable science, Futurity is an essential piece of the open access movement.

Futurity www.futurity.org

The Research Information Network, a policy research group in the UK, has focused their attention on research dissemination in the digital age. Of interest:

• If you build it, will they come? How researchers perceive and use web 2.0 — the executive report of their findings is available at the bottom of the page in PDF.
• Social media: A guide for researchers — includes guides for using social media in research and case studies of researchers from diverse disciplines

Ciber (Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research) recently published a report on the use of social media in research, Social media and research workflow.

In a recent conversation with colleagues in psychology, we discussed the role of the web — blogs, researcher websites, web-based portfolios — in research dissemination. Some colleagues expressed concerns that websites for individual researchers, research groups, and online research dissemination communicates an undesired entrepreneurial message. The Research Information Network’s Social Media guide summarized criticisms of scholars using the web and social media as a concern for the decline of academic discussion and debate, that social media and the web are peripheral to scholarly work, and privacy concerns. Others expressed interest in leveraging the web for research dissemination, national and international professional networking, and outreach.

The intersection of research scholarship and the web, the role of the web in dissemination, and its impact on academic careers has been addressed in many forums. One example: the Chronicle of Higher Education has many entries on the pros and cons of scholarly blogging, including pieces such as Social Media Lures Academics, Scholars Who Blog, The Trouble With Blogs: Can Blogging Derail Your Career, and Academic Blogs [note: not entirely open access, subscription required for many articles]. Other examples can be found in science blogs such as Scientopia or blog aggregates such as Research Blogging or Science Blogging, which aggregates blogs from multiple languages.

My questions to researchers and non-researchers: What do you think of the intersection of research scholarship and the web? What do you think of the dissemination of research via social media? I’m curious to hear your thoughts!