The Social Mediums were recently allocated a budget to advertise for our respective GC departments on social media, with a current focus on Facebook. Although there are some ethical concerns to consider about interacting with Facebook’s paid advertising platform, such as issues of data collection, we came to the conclusion that as long as we are using Facebook as a tool to disseminate information, we might as well maximize our returns. And this new strategy has proven fruitful: we have seen a tremendous increase in post engagement and page likes since reinstating paid advertisement. This post will talk about some strategies for effectively targeting your desired audience on Facebook ad posts.

— The Social Mediums

You are finally ready to share your questions, ideas, research, and conclusions with the world. You have your manuscript reviewed and accepted by the chosen journal. EXCITMENT. You are about to sign the copyright agreement… STOP! Do you know what you are agreeing to? Will you be able to use or share this article after it is published?
In this post, we discuss how to use SHEPRA RoMEO to learn publisher copyright policies and self-archiving for future use and sharing of your published work on social media. 

— The Social Mediums

Persistent Identifiers (PID) are alphanumeric codes used to uniquely identify academics with a persistent identity.  The Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID ID) is the international standard for PID systems with over 5 million registered academics and organizations.

More than eight major academic publications have committed to requiring ORCID ID for researchers.  Some examples include;

1. The Royal Society
2. American Geophysical Union
3. Hindawi
4. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
5. PLOS
6. Science
7. Nature Publishing Group
8. Elsevier, Springer, Wiley

ORCHID can be used on personal websites, when you submit publications, apply for grants, and to ensure you get credit for your work which is essential for researchers who have name changes or very common names.

When choosing a PID, here are some of the things should keep in mind:

• Can you use the PID to discover metadata and other information in a predictable manner? See:  FAIR PIDS
• In addition to researchers, can you use the PID to identify requests for comments, a specific institute, data sets?

Get credit where credit is due!

As more information is made available via social media channels, in order to reach the largest audience and maximize reach and effectiveness, the content published must be as accessible as possible. About 20% of the population is estimated to have disabilities including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities (www.digitalgov.gov/). The more accessible the content, the more people it can reach.

According to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), content should be made perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. They define these four principles as follows;

1. Perceivable – Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive. This means that users must be able to perceive the information being presented (it can’t be invisible to all of their senses)
2. Operable – User interface components and navigation must be operable. This means that users must be able to operate the interface (the interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform)
3. Understandable – Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable. This means that users must be able to understand the information as well as the operation of the user interface (the content or operation cannot be beyond their understanding)
4. Robust – Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies. This means that users must be able to access the content as technologies advance (as technologies and user agents evolve, the content should remain accessible)