This is a revised version of my Chalk dust to star dust story. The point is simple: it is getting tough to publish in top journals, or any journal for that matter. Doing good work is necessary but not sufficient. But, using social media to enhance your academic footprint may help.

1. PUBLISHING OR PERISHING –
CAN SOCIAL MEDIA SAVE YOU?
By
Waldo Krugell
Presentation at the MsM 3rd Annual Research Conference
Revolutions in Education: New opportunities for development?
School of Economics,
NWU, Potchefstroom campus

2. Publishing or perishing?
• It is getting tough out there:
• The median Harvard student has 0.04 AER equivalent publications
after 6 years when they are up for tenure.
• Only 1.5% of papers written about countries other than the U.S. are
published in top-tier journals.
• The methodology of published articles:
• A smell test for good papers? And the way that publishing works.
Year Theory Theory +
simulation
Empirical,
borrowed data
Empirical,
own data
Experiment
1963 50.7 1.5 39.1 8.7 0
2011 19.1 8.8 29.9 34.0 8.2

3. Publishing or perishing?
• So when even the local society journal wants cleanly identified
causal effects, you’ll have to work hard:
• Throw in the mathematics,
• Search for those large and novel data sets,
• Learn the latest techniques,
• Crunch the numbers, see if you can identify those causal relationships.
• Write everything up really well.
• But that may not be enough
• You also need to overcome the disadvantages of distance, of a
developing country context and a dearth of old friends at Harvard or
the LSE.
• You should be heard speaking about your good work at the right
seminars and conferences. Don't go to nice places for conferences, go
to where the journals' editors and reviewers are.
• And maybe social media can come to our rescue.

4. Social media?
• The internet has changed the way that research is being
produced and consumed.
• Researchers use university library sites, abstracting and indexing
services, compilations of links, social networks and search engines.
• Paul Krugman writes: ―… the tradional model of submit, get refereed,
publish and then people will read your work, broke down a long time
ago.‖
• But this about more than how you find inputs or disseminate
outputs – the social web makes it about:
Outreach
Impact
Academic
footprint
And that may contribute to get your work into the good journals.
Blogs
Twitter
Other sharing

5. So what does it mean for research and
publication efforts?
The way
we work
• Matching and
spillovers
• Specialisation
and diversity
The way
we
publish
• Tweets, blogs
• Evidence
Altmetrics
• Substitutes or
complements?
• Signal to
noise?

6. The way we work
• Blogs, tweets and research networks can play a role in
fostering academic agglomerations.
Economic growth in
agglomerations:
Research in the social web era:
Infrastructure – lowers the cost of
production.
You need basic hardware and friendly staff at
the library.
Diversity of intermediate inputs – there
are benefits from scale and
specialisation.
The intermediate inputs are the interactions
with and feedback from anyone and
everyone. Diversity or specialisation can be
beneficial.
Matching in the labour market – better
matching between employers and
employees increases efficiency and
lowers cost.
Matching with senior Profs and colleagues
Knowledge spillovers – ideas and
innovations are in the air and drive
growth in agglomerations.
These are the spillovers that occur aside from
the intermediate inputs and improved
matching. This is about research culture and
its spillovers.

7. There are many testimonials out there
• On the virtues of blogging:
"Previously if I wanted to convey an idea or a research
finding, my choices were limited to a conference paper or
journal article or, if I could work it up, a book. These
choices still remain, but in addition I can create a video,
podcast, blog post, slidecast, and more. It may be that a
combination of these is ideal—a blog post gets immediate
reaction and can then be worked into a conference
presentation, shared through SlideShare, or turned into a
paper that is submitted to a journal. In each case the blog
or social network becomes a key route for sharing and
disseminating the findings".

8. The way we publish
• Krugman explains how it worked in the 80’s:
• Connections got you to the right seminars and conferences.
• Good work kept you there.
• NBER Working Papers were the key output.
• ‖… journal publication was so slow relative to the pace of ongoing
work that it no longer acted as an information conduit".
• "So now we have rapid-fire exchange via blogs and online
working papers — and I think it’s all good. Work circulates
even faster than it did then, there are quick exchanges
that can advance understanding, and while it’s still hard to
break in, connections aren’t as important as they once
were and the system is much more open".

9. Publication: What does the evidence say?
• Ozler & McKenzie have tried to answer 3 questions.
• Do blogs improve dissemination of working papers or
journal articles?
• Looked at 50 blogs for references to papers in RePEc
• They find large and significant impacts of blogging on abstract
views and paper downloads.
• Do blogs raise the profile of their creators?
• US survey of favourite academic economists was linked to top 500
RePEc profiles.
• Regular blogging is strongly associated with being more likely to be
viewed as a favourite economist.

10. Publication: What does the evidence say?

11. Publication: What does the evidence say?
• Do blogs cause changes in attitudes or lead to increased
knowledge?
• Ozler & McKenzie undertakes a RCT with the Development Impact
blog. Reading DI:
• Increased interest in working as a researcher at the World Bank.
• Improved perceptions of the quality of research.
• Increased the name recognition of bloggers.
• In-depth knowledge of papers discussed was significantly higher among
average readers.
• They argue that blogs provide private benefits and
externalities.

12. Altmetrics?
• Altmetrics is about quantifying social web outreach and
impact of research.
• Going beyond, impact factors and citations.
• See for example ImpactStory.
• Do we want to include a blog in promotion and tenure
decisions?
• I think it depends on whether you view the social web
aspect as a substitute or complement to your research.
• My view is that tweets and blogs are becoming an
indispensable part of peer-reviewed research.
• It is about competition at top journals, networks and reputation.

13. Future research
• I am keen to know more about people’s views:
• Where do they find information, how do they find it?
• Where and how do they disseminate research results?
• Who see the benefits and would like to participate in the social web
of research? Is there scope for some collective action? What are
the barriers to entry?
• Together with Prof Wim Naude of MsM we have an online
questionnaire out.
• The Econoblogosphere is very active in the U.S., but what about
developing countries?
• And Business Schools differ from Economics departments.
• We want to learn more…

14. Thank you.
And have a look at my blogs:
Eat, sleep, blog, Economics
Skool vir Ekonomie
Follow @ekonoom on Twitter