A major goal of research and scientific writings is to promote the frontier of knowledge. This in turn benefits the researcher with associated increase in reputation and attendant career progression. Increasingly, researchers are being evaluated based upon their publications as well as the number of citations these publications received. One of the key ways to increase citations is to expose the research output to a wider audience because people can only cite articles that they are aware of. As opined by Marashi et al, citations to an article may strongly hinge on the visibility instead of merit1. Furthermore, Ebrahim argues that in the future, writing a high quality article in journals will only give it a fifty percent chance of getting cited, while the promotion and broad dissemination of the publications will be needed to complete the other fifty percent.2,3
Though most journals make attempt at increasing the visibility of the articles they published, the researchers who wrote the articles are in the best position to promote their papers more effectively.3 The visibility of a research project/paper can be increased during several stages of the research lifecycle. At the pre- research stage, by participating in team-authored articles especially with international authors. At the pre- publication stage, by publishing in journals with high impact factor, as well as choosing open access journals. And finally at the post-publication stage by actively promoting the article to a wide range of audience.3,4
The social media can play a key role at the various stages stated above, and this piece is aimed at informing/reminding researchers that the social media can be a veritable tool in achieving the aforementioned. While the social media offers a wide range of tools that can assist the researcher in finding, using and disseminating information, this write-up will focus on its ability to increase visibility, citation and ultimately the impact of published works. Social media use has greatly increased in the last decade, with Pew Research Center reporting an increased usage among American adults from 7% in 2005 to 65% in 2015.5 The upsurge in social media use has affected several aspects like politics, healthcare, education, and is currently having an increasingly growing effect on research.6 Social media provides an informal and quick means of informing people about one’s research by simply posting it or creating a link to the paper online.