JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Twitter, the social media platform had its thirteen birthday last year and has 270 million users worldwide. Tweets are the name given to the 280-character micro-blog on Twitter. Some researchers disseminate research via social media platforms such as Twitter aiming to increase impact and potentially citation counts. We anticipate that ‘tweetations’ and ‘Altmetrics’ could be used alongside traditional metrics such as impact factor to provide evidence of public engagement and for funding grants. There is weak positive correlational data indicating that tweets do increase citation count. As part of our research dissemination strategy for our trial, Survivors’ Rehabilitation Evaluation After Cancer (SURECAN), we conceptually investigated the possibility of finding out the best way of utilising Twitter for maximal research dissemination, e.g. best time to tweet, the best content within a tweet. We concluded that such an investigation would require two Twitter accounts and it was too difficult to control for confounding factors. Despite this our literature search found a number of tips to increase Twitter engagement such as actively tweeting projects at conferences and producing useful content for the target audience. Researchers should consider video as a medium on Twitter to communicate research results, e.g. video abstract, as they have a ten times higher engagement rate compared to those tweets without videos. The use of Twitter especially when accompanied by a clear strategy and the use of specific tools such as videos could increase engagement of research with the hope, but not the promise, of citation.