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Penny Freedman

By: John Cody

For those wondering what the future of academic publishing might look like, the Springer Handbook of Robotics might point the way. The team behind it took a different approach from standard handbooks. The innovation, collaboration, and marketing that went into it has undoubtedly contributed to its success. The strength of the publication is reflected in the diversity of its audience that ranges from roboticists to ethicists exploring the future of robotics’ impact on humanity, to members of the European Commission looking to understand developments in the robotics community.

Bruno Siciliano and Oussama Khatib, co-editors, and Torsten Kroeger, multimedia lead and contributing author to the handbook, sat down to discuss how they brought it together. It is their hope that their experience can help more authors make their own books or journal articles more accessible.

Collaborate Across Disciplines

For a massive book totaling 2,300 pages and featuring 80 chapters from the top robotics researchers in the world, it is clear that the Second Edition of the Springer Handbook of Robotics stands out in terms of the amount of researchers involved and the sheer amount of information it contains. However, the team behind the handbook realized that their book could reach beyond core robotics disciplines.

“The special thing about robotics is the fact that it contains so many sub-disciplines,” Khatib said. “It is very broad, which means it brings people together from fields as diverse as mechanical engineering, biology, medicine, sociology, electrical engineering, and many other intersections.”

Siciliano and Khatib believe that the greatest advances in robotics are coming at the crossroads of disciplines, which is why they knew their book couldn’t just feature experts in core robotics subjects. The two co-editors’ approach benefits others working in scientific publishing. That’s why it’s important for researchers and academics to explore new ideas outside of their field that might push their own research area forward.

Although the handbook represented a massive collaborative effort across disciplines, it was essential for Siciliano and Khatib that their project was more than just a series of independent chapters representing disparate ideas.

“We were not just asking contributors to write something and hit ‘send’ followed by us just putting it all together into a volume,” Khatib said. “We really tried to digest what is essential and critical in the different areas of robotics, and try to bring it to the robotics community in a way that would be useful to both newcomers and experts in a given field. That means at each stage of our book, whether it is design, planning or control, there is an overarching narrative that draws the reader deeper into where robotics is and where it is going.”

Encourage Teams to Step Outside of Their Comfort Zone

Siciliano and Khatib tried doing collaboration differently. Instead of letting authors pick their own collaborators, they often teamed up authors who had never worked together before to complete key chapters of the book.

Siciliano says that usually when a professor or researcher decides to produce a paper or piece of content, they pair up with colleagues they have a good working relationship with. While this approach can produce less conflict, it can also stifle the free flow of new ideas that were essential to the handbook’s success.

Look Beyond the Written Word

One of the most innovative elements of the Springer Handbook of Robotics is the inclusion of multimedia content to leverage the valuable written content of the book. This Multimedia Extension allows readers to interact with content on a new level. The book not only features a huge library of video content, but also uses promotional video content to engage with their audience.

One video features what Siciliano describes as the “latest and coolest developments in robotics in the last 15 to 16 years.” Their 10 minute video consists of hundreds of hours of work, and required collaboration between Siciliano, Khatib, and Kroeger.

What is perhaps their most ambitious project was the creation of the Springer Handbook of Robotics web portal to host the Multimedia Extension of the book. The portal serves as a quick one-stop shop where contributors can easily upload videos that corresponded to specific chapters in the handbook.

Over time, they were able to collect over 700 videos for the book, which means that most of the chapters have supplementary video content. In order to ensure quality, they implemented a peer review system to ensure that the videos were appropriate with meaningful content that supports the book’s content.

Kroeger added useful features to the web portal, allowing contributors to upload descriptions, metadata, and videos, and then link those videos to specific chapters of the book. All videos and descriptions are available publicly under the least restrictive Creative Commons license, allowing anyone to reuse the videos for educational or commercial purposes.

“For robotics specifically as an applied science, it is very beneficial for readers to see videos that are then related to some theoretical foundation to really convey how things work,” said Kroeger, who worked on the web portal project while working at Google and X, both of which also partially funded the project. “Some videos are relevant from a scientific perspective, others are relevant from an educational perspective, and others from a historical perspective, and it is a very easy way for readers to comprehend the content on a higher level than simply reading what is in the text.”

In addition to the chapter videos, video tutorials were created by Springer for each of the seven parts based on a script prepared by the Part Editors. The Part Editors also outlined what was needed to produce the right kind of video sequences to fit the content of each chapter.

The Springer Handbook of Robotics App

In the course of the project, when it was clear that the videos might become a real success and support the Handbook tremendously, they decided to develop a corresponding app for smartphone and tablets. With the app (available for iOS and Android), readers use the camera on their phone or tablet, hold it to a page containing a special icon, and produce an augmented reality on the screen of their device. This allows readers to watch videos as they read along with the book.

“I can image that specifically the app may be highly relevant for journals and other books in the future,” said Kroeger. “The main idea is to provide illustrative content to readers in a very accessible way.”

As publishing explores new interactive technologies, apps like the one developed by Kroeger may find their way into new Springer products in the future, enabling authors to better connect with their audience to share knowledge.

Download the handbook apps here: http://handbookofrobotics.org/app

Watch video here: http://handbookofrobotics.org/view-chapter/0/videodetails/843

Use Social Media to Connect With Your Audience

Social media is now considered a key element of promotion for any book. The editorial and publishing teams created a social media campaign for the Handbook, which included the hashtag #handbooksofrobotics. Following the hashtag gave the team a centralized social media stream that everyone could follow for the latest updates on the book. Using the hashtag became a popular way for fans and contributors to share photos of the book and show off their own robot creations.

Siciliano realized the potential of harnessing the authors’ networks through social media and their own academic and research circles. The team successfully leveraged the over 220 contributing authors.

“I asked every author to send me a photo with their robot and the Handbook,” Siciliano said. “I also asked them to share those photos on their own social media profiles, whether it was Facebook or Twitter. The response was fantastic. Even friends of my own kids were just coming across these photos naturally and connected them back to their friend’s father, which demonstrates how incredible social media can be for getting the word out.”

They put together a video collating all of those photos and promoted it on social media to help demonstrate how strongly the community supported the book. The video features authors and fans with the handbook in classrooms and alongside their robot creations.

The Importance of Personal Contact

In the digital age, it’s possible to produce a book with multiple collaborators who never actually see each other in-person. However, Siciliano and Khatib credit much of the success of the project to two handbook workshops that were organized before the book was published.

“The workshops were not only key for creating and building the individual chapters, but also to help ensure those chapters represent a coherent story within the whole context of the Handbook,” Khatib said.

The workshops featured technical discussions on robotics, explored what should and should not be in the book, and how to ensure continuity and harmony between the various chapters they had planned. The success of the workshops underline the benefits of meeting collaborators in-person. It not only helps provide an environment conducive to fruitful discussion, but can also jumpstart a project that is having trouble realizing its full potential.

The Springer Handbook of Robotics is just one of many groundbreaking titles published by Springer. For more information on publishing a book, visit our book author page.

 

By: Jessica Monaghan

Meeting the open access requirements of research funders and institutions can prove a real challenge for authors. As the increase in records in the registry of OA repository mandates and policies (ROARMAP) demonstrates, the number of organisations with OA requirements is increasing every year, meaning more and more researchers are subject to such policies. OA policies can also vary widely in their requirements, leaving authors unsure or unaware of the steps required to achieve compliance. In a 2016 survey of Springer Nature authors who had published via the gold open access route, we found that 40% of authors were unable to identify any of their main research funder’s open access policy requirements, and only 15% correctly identified all requirements.

At Springer Nature, we’ve been exploring ways to help our authors comply with the OA requirements of their research funders and institutions, through raising awareness, adapting our policies, and carrying out checks to identify potential compliance issues.

 

Chart: Awareness of OA requirements of main research funder among Springer Nature OA authors.  Source: Survey of Springer Nature authors who had published open access, conducted in 2016 (n =1,111). Respondents were asked to select their main research funder’s OA requirements from a range of options, and responses were then matched to actual funder requirements to determine accuracy of authors’ understanding.
Incorrect identification includes all authors who incorrectly identified their funder’s green and gold OA requirements, or incorrectly identified one of these, and selected ‘I don’t know’ for the other.
Partial identification includes all authors who correctly or partially identified their funder’s green and/or gold OA requirements.

Raising awareness and reducing opportunities for non-compliance

Given the lack of awareness among many authors, we realised that providing information about funder and institutional OA requirements is a key step in improving compliance. For those authors looking for information and advice, we offer a free open access funding and policy support service, providing online guidance and support by email to authors across our Nature Research, Palgrave Macmillan, BioMed Central and Springer portfolios.

We’ve also been putting measures in place to minimise opportunities for non-compliance and to raise awareness, particularly in the area of open access licensing. A growing number of funders require authors to use the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence when publishing via the gold OA route, or where they’ve funded an APC. Like these funders, Springer Nature supports the CC BY licence as a means of enabling maximum rights for sharing and re-use of research publications, and this is reflected in our policies. BioMed Central and Springer Open journals already use CC BY as their sole licence, and we’re now moving many of our other open access titles to this policy to maximise CC BY uptake and ensure compliance with funder licensing requirements. Our two largest OA journals, Nature Communications and Scientific Reports moved to using CC BY-only as of January 2017, and other titles will be following suit shortly. Where journals continue to offer a range of licence options we’re alerting authors to the need to consider funder licensing requirements, with links to licence guidance being added to licensing forms and to journal submission systems and websites.

Springer Nature also deposits all articles published via the gold OA route into the PubMed Central (PMC) repository, provided that the journal is in subject scope and has been accepted for indexing in PMC. By doing so we’re helping our authors to meet the deposition requirements of many funders worldwide. We also participate in the Jisc Publications Router, sending UK-authored OA articles and metadata to be deposited in the repositories of participating institutions, to help support compliance with HEFCE’s OA requirements for the next Research Excellence Framework (REF). At the moment we’re sending UK authored content from our BioMed Central and Springer Open journals, and in future this will be available to all OA articles with UK authors.

Identifying and correcting OA compliance issues

In the small number of cases where articles fail to achieve compliance on publication, our new post-publication checks are designed to identify non-compliant licence choices and catch any failures in PMC deposition, making sure that articles can be made compliant as quickly as possible.

As a starting point for our checks, we went through the records of our OA publications from the past two years, identifying cases where the authors’ choice of OA licence would not allow them to meet the requirements of their research funder’s OA policy. We’ve been working with these authors to re-publish their papers under a CC BY licence, allowing them to fully meet their licence requirements of their funders. We’ve also taken measures to verify that all OA articles in indexed journals are available in PMC in their final published format, and are re-depositing articles where issues are identified. We will be working to carry out these post-publication checks on regular basis to so that we can be sure all our authors can achieve  compliance with every OA policy in all possible cases, even after publication.

The success of our efforts to date is reflected in the Wellcome Trust’s recent analysis of OA compliance among 2015/16 recipients of Charity Open Access Fund (COAF) APC funding. Average compliance was at 91% across all publishers, and Springer Nature reached 96% compliance (97% when cases of misreporting where no APC was paid to Springer Nature are removed). We’re proud of the progress made from previous years, though we recognise that there’s still room for improvement.

As one of the first signatories of the Wellcome Trust’s publisher requirements, which come into effect this April, Springer Nature is committed to improving levels of OA compliance, and not only for those authors supported by the Wellcome Trust. By taking these steps we hope to reduce the burden of OA policy compliance for authors, and to assist funders and institutions in ensuring that the research they have supported is made openly accessible in the manner that they intended.

Having recently been awarded a CBE for services to the Social Sciences in the 2017 New Year’s Honours list, we spoke to Professor Carol Smart about her career in academia, the impact of the social sciences, and why they’re so important as we appear to enter a post-truth period of ‘alternative facts’.

Can you give us an overview of your work in academia to date?

My first degree was in sociology but my master’s degree was in criminology and my PhD was in the field of socio-legal studies. This means that throughout my academic career I’ve been able to shift focus and emphasise different elements at different times.

While I’ve been able to contribute to sociological theorising, most of my work has had an applied element and at times I’ve worked closely with practitioners in the areas of law and social policy. My core sole authored publications include Women, Crime & Criminology (1976), The Ties that Bind (1984), Feminism and the Power of Law (1989), and Personal Life: New Directions in Sociological Thinking, (2007). However I have also jointly published with colleagues I have worked with on funded projects and the main monographs include The Changing Experience of Childhood: Families and Divorce, (2001), Same-Sex Marriages: New generations, new relationships (2013), and Relative Strangers: Family life, genes and donor conception (2014).

What is your most recent Palgrave book, Relative Strangers, about? What were your findings?

Relative Strangers is a book which explores what it means for couples and families to have a child born through donor conception (either sperm, egg or embryo donation). Petra Nordqvist and I sought to find out what it might mean for family relationships when a child was born who was not genetically related to ‘one side’ of a family or possibly to neither side.

Through in-depth interviews with couples (both lesbian and heterosexual) we explored how important genetic relatedness was for families, and also whether parents would opt to tell their children about their genetic origins. The study was carried out at a time when the consensus on whether or not to tell a child was changing in the direction of greater openness, and yet we found that this openness could be very hard for families. We also discovered that people’s understanding of how genes work and their very significance could be a great variance to contemporary scientific views.

How do you hope your research has had a real word impact?

‘Real world’ impact is a very loaded expression! For the sake of argument I shall take it to mean impact on ideas, policy and practice and my considered view is that influencing ideas, albeit that this is hard to evidence in the short term, is just as important as impact on a field of practice.

As to the first (ideas) my early work on criminology and on family law surely introduced a strong feminist perspective into mainstream thinking. I was able to demonstrate the paternalistic and patriarchal thinking that dominated those areas and subsequently many other scholars have taken those ideas forward. In more practical terms, my work on the experiences of children after their parents separated/divorced brought children’s voices into focus and policy has increasingly tried to be attentive to children’s needs. I am particularly pleased that this research was, in part, relied on to avoid policies of automatic 50:50 sharing of children on divorce.

As to more recent work I think we need to wait and see but I hope that my work on relatedness (Personal Life) will challenge the idea that we now live in a world of unconnected, selfish individuals.

What do you think your recognition in the New Year’s Honours list represents for the social sciences?

Before this year I paid scant attention to the Honours List but I think that this time only one other recipient of an honour (Tess Ridge at Bristol University) received one for services to social science. If this is typical it would seem that social science makes very little impact on those who make decisions about Honours and that is disappointing.

I would like to imagine that this recognition could boost the profile of the social sciences, but I am a realist and I think that fields such as sociology, social policy, socio-legal studies, criminology and other aligned social sciences might do better to work through more accessible forms of media (including social media) to draw wider attention to the value of their research and ideas. Having said that, I also think that universities and professional bodies need to be sure that they put forward the names of more social scientists for these honours.

In your view, why do the social sciences matter?

We appear to be entered into a period of ‘post-truth’, ‘alternative facts’ and widespread cynicism about experts of any sort. This is a major tragedy for anyone involved in higher education and research as it devalues, at a stroke, all the learning, studying and careful appraisal of evidence which goes on in the social sciences.

At the same time this frightening trend means that social science is even more important. The disciplines that comprise the social sciences all teach how to think critically, how to challenge received wisdoms, and above all provide a world view which has a scope beyond individual experience and biography.

Social science provides context (global, historical and contemporary) to events and, to paraphrase C. Wright Mills, it can save us from becoming the mere victims of the cycle of history and of events created by others. Sociology, my foundation discipline has, par excellence, the potential to produce robust, savvy, socially aware students and we need such people more than ever.

What do you think the future holds for those working in the social sciences?

As my previous answer would suggest, I think that things are going to be quite tough for social science over the next decade. We all know that funding for research is getting much harder to gain and the race to publish enough articles in so-called gold standard journals risks obliterating time to think and reflect carefully. As I, with several colleagues, wrote in the edited collection The Craft of Knowledge (2014) creating knowledge is not about the quick application of acquired techniques, but a craft that needs to be nurtured, shared and often revised in a context of joint endeavour rather than winner-takes-all competition.

We may also face a decade of further denigration of scientific work, as if the existing sneering of tabloid newspapers and the production of new social myths on social media was not enough. But this simply makes the need for a strong constituency of social scientists who will engage with these modern challenges all the more vital.

Read more pieces like this on Social Science Matters.

Interested in learning more about the facts behind the stories you read from the media? Each month we’re pulling some of the major headlines from the news, and pairing them with research articles related to the topic. With the power of SharedIt, you’ll be able to read full journal articles and share them with others!

We’ll return next month with more research behind the headlines. Learn more about SharedIt, and share articles that interest you with colleagues and peers if your university or institution subscribes to SpringerLink.  

Featured image: Newsstand by Nicholas Boos. CC 2.0 via Flickr.

Who are our Springer authors? We took a closer look at the data in 2016 to pull together an overview of what it means to be a Springer author.

What we found spans 351,000 journal articles and 12,000 books. Our authors bring research from over 21 disciplines to the scientific community.

See more below in our 2016 Author Snapshot infographic.

View and print the PDF

Interested in learning more about being a Springer author? Visit our author page to learn more about the benefits and services we provide.

This month’s spotlight is on our Transfer Desk Service. One journal’s rejection may be another’s discovery. Find out how the service works and benefits both authors and editors.

As an author when a paper you’ve spent time and effort researching and writing gets rejected from a journal, it can be hard not to take it to heart. As an editor it can be discouraging to have to reject a great paper that might be a better fit for another journal that is just too interdisciplinary or a poor fit for the scope of your journal. At Springer we want to ensure that all papers find the right home for their research. Enter the Transfer Desk, a service that is easy for both authors and editors to use.

What does the Transfer Desk do?
The Transfer Desk service allows authors to resubmit their papers to other suitable journals after facing a rejection on their original submission. It can be difficult to begin the submission process from the very start, and with the Transfer Desk service you don’t have to go at it alone. The Transfer Desk combines any editor recommendations, your preferences, and our journal matching technology to find the best home for your work.

How does this benefit me as an author?
Save yourself time and effort, as well as missing out or further delaying publishing your research. When you agree to a transfer, our transfer team does all the work of handling the re-submission process. The team will analyze your manuscript and select one or more journals where your paper may be a good fit. You can suggest your own ideas for journals to resubmit to as well. The Transfer Desk will do a pre-submission inquiry to all of your selected journals for you.

Do I have to use the service? Will I be charged?
No, you don’t have to use the service. You can automatically decline, or stop at any time during the process. Your manuscript will never be sent to a journal without your permission. The Transfer Desk service is completely free, and at no time will you be charged.

I’m an editor – how does this service benefit me? Will it add more time to my day?
As an editor, it’s easy to help authors find the right home for their research. It will take no additional time on your part. It simply requires clicking a different button in Editorial Manager. Instead of hitting “Reject,” just click “Decline and Transfer to Transfer Desk.” It’s as easy as that! Utilizing the service helps to promote good quality research, and leaves authors with a more positive impression of your journal even when faced with a rejection.

While utilizing the service does not guarantee that a paper will be published, it does ensure that a rejection is not the end of the line for sound research. Get answers to more questions about the Transfer Desk here.

What does it take to get your journal article from submission to publication? How does your book go from a manuscript to a title available at your university library? When your journal partners with Springer Nature for distribution, what steps are taking place to ensure all goes smoothly? We’re answering these questions and more in our new series “Behind the Scenes at Springer Nature.” Learn about the work being done across the company by our dedicated employees from around the world. Today we’re chatting with Nathalie Jacobs  from our Springer editorial team.

What is your position at Springer/which office do you work in?fotoa

I am a Senior Editor for Engineering publications.  I am part of the Applied Sciences Editorial Group and I work at the Dordrecht office in the Netherlands.

What are the main duties of your job?

I am responsible for the acquisition and publication of engineering books, reference works and journals. Apart from that, I have been leading author workshops in Spanish, at universities in Spanish speaking countries.

What does your workday look like on a typical day?

When I am at the office I normally start by checking and answering my e-mails, I review book proposals  that have come in and forward them to reviewers in each specific discipline/field. I check the journal publications to see if everything is running smoothly, if we are publishing in time, and I coordinate things with the assistant editors that work with me on my publishing program.

If a board meeting for one of my journals is coming up I prepare the presentation for this board meeting by collecting all kinds of data about the journal in question.

In case I am at a conference, I go to the booth and try to talk to as many (future) authors as possible. Some appointments are made in advance and some people just drop by the booth to talk to me. It is always nice to see people in person, it gives you so much more room to explain how Springer Nature works and what we can do for them. We also hold editorial board meetings for our journals at conferences, usually during the lunch breaks, or in the evening.

What project(s) have you most enjoyed working on?

To be honest, I enjoy working on most of my books and journals. It is always nice when authors come back to you with a new book project. This means that they have enjoyed working with us and that they were happy with their previous book. I really enjoyed working on the Handbook of Sustainable Engineering. I was really proud to have a foreword by Nobel Prize winner Dr. R.K. Pachauri, Chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He said: “The efficient utilization of energy, sustainable use of natural resources, and large-scale adoption of sustainable technologies is the key to a sustainable future. The Handbook of Sustainable Engineering provides tools that will help us achieve these goals”. Having published this book, to me it feels as if we as a company also contributed to a more sustainable world.”

I also enjoy leading workshops in Spanish speaking countries. I lived in Spain for seven years and before working at Springer I had my own translation office. For me, being able to use my Spanish is really great, and universities really appreciate the fact that we give workshops in Spanish. The workshops give me a lot of energy as people have so many questions, and they are really happy to be able to ask questions to  a publishing editor that speaks their own language. To me, being able to help them with their queries and publications gives me enormous satisfaction. They are very grateful and sometimes ask questions in their own language that they may have not felt they could have asked as easily in English.

Since starting at the company, what changes have been most notable?

I started to work for the company in January 2000. Back then I was a part of Kluwer Academic Publishers. In 2004 we joined Springer, and now we are a part of Springer Nature. I have of course noticed the mergers, however I think changes that were implemented were only for the good of the company and our authors. In these past 17 years I have seen so many changes, the rise of eBooks, for example, and the implementation of the manuscript submission and peer review tracking systems for journals. When I started to work for the company journal articles were sent to reviewers by surface mail or fax! The review process, of course, took much longer, and the way it is done now is far more efficient. We are now able to offer so much more to our authors and audience. We have also become even more global and international.

What do you most enjoy about your role/working at Springer Nature?

I like the fact that I am part of a truly global team. My direct manager is based in Germany and colleagues from my team are based all over the world- in Beijing, Singapore, London, New York, and Milan, to name a few places. It is really nice to work with so many international colleagues and to learn from each other’s cultures.

Apart from that, I attend many conferences worldwide. This year a conference could be in Amsterdam, but next year or in two years’ time it could be held in Singapore or Athens. It is really nice to go to these conferences and meet the authors and editorial board members of journals. Sometimes the plane is full of people going to the same conference and discussions about new books start on the plane on my way to the conference, or on the plane going home. This makes even the plane trip effective and fun as you are already doing business.

Having been with the company for more than 17 years, it means that you know people within the engineering community very well. Sometimes when I stand at the conference booth it is like meeting with family. Authors, and even their partners, are really happy to see you again as in all these years you build a personal as well as a working relationship with them. Sometimes I watch programmes on the Discovery Channel and my husband always laughs when I tell him the names of engineers talking on a show. I know many of them and it is great to see that many of my contacts are at the cutting edge of modern developments that affect our daily life.

Have you thought about starting a blog, but are unsure where to start? There are plenty of blog posts from academic bloggers that cover the many benefits of blogging, but if you’ve already made the decision to start – what now?

  1. Create your blog. There are many free services available that make it easy and fun to create a blog or website. There are often options to upgrade to paid services, but when you’re just starting out there is plenty of free content to choose from in terms of design and layout. WordPress is a popular option – and what we use for The Source; Blogger – a Google product; and Tumblr, which is especially useful if you’re interested in something that is more image based. There are endless options to choose from. It doesn’t hurt to open a few accounts to see which platform you like the best.
  2. Create the basic bones of the blog. Set-up a design and layout. Make sure the name of your blog is prominently displayed, and that your name and contact information can be easily located. You never know if a post may lead to a collaboration or an invitation to speak at a conference.
  3. Draft a schedule of what you would like to write about. A simple spreadsheet can help you keep track of post topics, and the dates you’d like for things to publish. As you begin to build an audience it’s ideal to post as often as possible. Aim for posting once or twice a week. If inspiration strikes, and you write several posts at one time, be sure to spread out the posting dates with the “scheduling” function on your blog.
  4. Add an image to your post. It may not seem necessary, but it’s been reported that articles with images get 94% more views than those without. Find images that are free to use under creative commons licenses on websites like Flickr and WikiMedia Commons. If it’s relevant for your blog’s tone, use pictures you take yourself too. Personalizing a blog is a great way to connect with your readers.
  5. Capitalize on popular topics on the web. Stuck on a post idea for the day or week? Hoping to bump up visitors to your blog? Check out Google Trends. See what people are talking about, and if a subject matches the tone and theme of your blog, write a post about it.
  6. Tell people about your blog! Include your blog link in your e-mail signature. Each time you post something new, share your blog post on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and any other social media channels you use. If your privacy settings are restrictive, make sure you set these posts to “public” so that others can easily share your blog links.
  7. Find other like-minded bloggers. Once you’ve built up a steady stream of posts, see if other bloggers you follow may be interested in doing a “guest post” on your blog where they provide content in exchange for a link back to their own blog. See if anyone might be interested in letting you guest post on their blog. Leave comments on blogs that include a link back to your own, offering your own opinion and insight. In this way you gain more exposure, gaining new readers that may not have found your blog otherwise.

Featured Image: Blog by NOGRAN s.r.o. CC 2.0 via Flickr.

This month’s service spotlight is on our latest offering for researchers, Recommended. Keeping up with the latest research in your field just got easier than ever before.

A closer look at Recommended

There are over 4,000 new primary research papers published every day. In a survey of nature.com users from 2015, we learned that regardless of their field of study, most researchers feel that staying up-to-date with the latest research takes a lot of hard work. Despite their best efforts to keep-up by combining journal table of contents alerts, PubMed, Twitter, and suggestions from lab peers, most researchers felt that in a typical month they probably miss relevant papers. Recommended our new, innovative service will solve this problem by suggesting relevant papers for you across all publishers based upon what you’re reading now on Springer Nature publishing sites.

How does Recommended work? 

Recommended learns what you’re interested in by analysing the last 100 papers you’ve read across SpringerLink, nature.com, and BioMed Central. Recommended then looks for similar papers across 45,000 journals from Crossref and PubMed. This combines with data from other sources, such as Altmetric, to create a recommendation for what you should read next. The service will continually learn and improve based on what you select to read from the suggestions.

Who can use Recommended?

Anyone who has read articles from Nature.com, BioMed Central, Springer Open and SpringerLink can start getting recommendations. Recommended has been in beta testing for over a year. So far users have accessed the service from over 200 countries and 70% are return visitors.

How do I get my recommendations?

Sign-up here to start receiving personalized e-mail recommendations. In addition, look out for messages that will appear on either the bottom right hand side of the screen or within the full-text of articles on any of the Springer Nature publishing sites.

Service Spotlight is a series on The Source that highlights a service and/or product that is a unique benefit of being a Springer Nature author. If there is something you would like to learn more about, feel free to get in touch with us.

With content spanning several publishers including Springer, Nature, Palgrave Macmillan, BioMed Central and more, we’re positioned to offer you some of the best content in the research community. Our content includes the type of material that will not only help you with your specific research needs as an academic, but with information that is useful for all researchers regardless of their discipline focus. This week we’re sharing an excerpt from Being “In and Out”: Providing Voice to Early Career Women in Academia edited by Narelle Lemon and Susanne Garvis. In this excerpt, Narelle Lemon discusses the importance of Twitter on her academic career.

By: Narelle Lemon

My world as an academic opened up when I discovered Twitter. Prior to exploring social media professionally I was in a state of confusion, frustration and exhaustion. I was entering a revaluation stage of my career and I was very much buried in emotions connected closely to questioning academia. I was six months post graduating from my doctorate and I was beginning to refocus on research possibilities and building partnerships to develop my skills and build my research profile. The institution where I had been employed at the time was emerging on a time of change. For me this was exciting but for many of my colleagues this was confronting whereby change, accountability and research active pressures where bringing out some undesirable behaviour. This energy was very disruptive and was a trigger for me to find others outside of my faculty and university to work and network with. In my adventures of “putting myself out there” I began to overhear some academics outside of teacher education talking about how they were engaging with social media to support their networking and sense of belonging. My interest was sparked and I set myself the challenge to establish a Twitter profile to evaluate if it could be a space for me to engage with professionally. Part of me approached this with hesitation and the thought “hmmm, do I have the time to engage with another social media?” and the other part of me was “I wonder how this works professionally, I’m fascinated to see what else is possible with Twitter beyond celebrities and the latest fashion trends”.

Within a week I was hooked. I was amazed at how many hashtags  existed to support academia and research – there was #highered #AcWriMo and #PhDchat to just begin with. I was also taken aback with the links I made with colleagues outside of my current faculty who also were using Twitter for professional interactions. The incidental conversations about Twitter use, insights gained and connections made allowed me to develop the confidence to tweet. I soon realised I had to establish a professional account and a personal account to deliberately refocus the content I accessed and also shared. In hindsight my nickname as my Twitter handle (subconsciously thinking perhaps I would not be in the Twittersphere for long) would not be my first choice for a professional identity however, it has become a branding that enables me to become an approachable individual virtually and with those I meet face-to-face. In some ways my Twitter profile, linked to my blog where I share my initial research ideas that inform my more formal academic publications, and digital identity helped me emerge from behind the metal door that seemed fused shut into a new world of innovation, collaboration, open communication, support, and collegiality. Others engaging with Twitter were also trying to figure out how to be an active researcher and productive academic in the changing times of higher education but were doing so with a much more supportive and generous approach. My fellow Tweeters were being the change I wanted to be. There was a clear disruption to the competitive nature that is associated to academia. As Budge et al. (in press) reiterate that participating in the use of Twitter as academics with other academics is a part of a collective process of challenging what it means to be an academic. Working productively, writing hints, productivity hints, and ongoing support and encouragement are all enacted and expected academic behaviours on Twitter. This way of working is challenging the landscape of scholarly publishing “with a preponderance of open-source academics” (Carrigan, 2014, para 10). I was very attracted to this way of working and it contributed considerably to my flight of perseveration.

Twitter became my vehicle in which to begin to disrupt the competitive nature and hierarchy of academia that is often associated to the performance culture of higher education (Flaherty, 2014). My Twitter use has moved from engaging with this social media professionally for ideas, keeping in the loop on up to date information, and engaging with other educators to also being a digital tool for my teaching and dissemination of my research. I access information that I share with my students as well as introduce them to Twitter as a digital access point to resources. My access point to information has widened and I enjoy the opportunity of sharing this with students in the higher education context as well. It is especially exciting when students who begin to engage with Twitter have opportunities emerge that they had never even considered.

My ability to disseminate my research has widened also where I share my work and seek feedback from over 1606 Twitter followers (at time of publication). In linking my blog I have had over 14,600 (at time of publication) views since its establishment in early 2012. Then by utilising links to my academic.com profile I can see how many people are accessing my research and downloading my publications. Recently I shared a paper that within 48 hours had 136 downloads. As an early career researcher I could never be able to reach this wide audience without engaging in global social media networks. The power and breath of this way of disseminating is far more outreaching than in traditional ways of working. This approach is especially disrupting the traditional ways of working in academia and pushing the boundaries in reporting the impact of research as an early career researcher.

Twitter has become for me an access point for impact information that I may not normally have had the opportunity to see at such an early stage of my career. The innovative ideas that are shared are inspiring and motivating for me. I thoroughly enjoy the chance to hear other perspectives and pose questions. The chance to listen as well as be heard is also appealing in a world where continued growth and meaning making require active participation and communication. The most profound impact for me has been the chance to engage with others on a global level that I would not normally be able to connect with, listen to, or ask questions to. In some cases the Twittersphere has allowed for contact with a well-established researcher that I would not normally have access to nor feel like I could contact due to my perceived reading of their availability. Twitter breaks these walls down as contact over time and the concise communication of what it is you actually like about their work and what you want to inquire further into is made possible in 140 character tweets.

Being “In and Out” is the first book to bring together women’s voices across the landscape of academia who have experienced being “in” and “out” of the academy. You can read more of this chapter on SpringerLink.

Featured Image: Un nouveau logo pour Twitter by Philippe Martin. CC 2.0 via Flickr.
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