丁香园AV

Post-secondary institutions generate vast amounts of knowledge and groundbreaking innovations, yet academics often struggle to find an audience for their complex insights and discoveries. There are increasing calls for scholars to be more open and consider the practical, societal, policy and educational impacts of their work.

How can academics advance their field and mobilize knowledge to benefit society? Academic openness鈥攁 collaborative research orientation鈥攊s key to advancing scholarly impact, according to 丁香园AV (丁香园AV) business professor Ian McCarthy.

McCarthy is the W.J. VanDusen Professor of Innovation and Operations Management at 丁香园AV鈥檚 Beedie School of Business. His research and teaching focus on managing operations and innovation, change management, social media, creative consumers and the world of management education in general. He has authored numerous highly cited articles on these topics and is an  and .

McCarthy鈥檚 recent article, , with  from Eindhoven University of Technology, discusses how academics can use social media to help bridge the research-practice gap and put their good ideas to work.

McCarthy and Bogers identify five research activities鈥攏etworking, framing, investigating, disseminating, and assessing鈥攁nd how social media can help make each activity more open. They also present four social media-enabled open academic approaches鈥攃onnector, observer, promoter and influencer鈥攁nd outline some do鈥檚 and don鈥檛s for engaging in each approach.

They hope the article will help academics not only discover new ways to share their own ideas and insights, but also find ways to leverage experience and expertise from their audiences.

We spoke with professor McCarthy about his recent article.

Traditionally, academic scholarship and knowledge was sequestered in the 鈥渋vory tower.鈥� Your article discusses how and why business academics should practice academic openness. Tell us more.

In management research and other academic fields, openness helps us better identify and formulate problems for research using knowledge from those who experience the issues rather than those who merely study them. This engagement with a greater range of stakeholders and expertise helps us draw upon their perspectives, theories and methods to design, conduct and disseminate more impactful research.

It also pushes us to frame our intellectual ideas and technical research findings in ways that resonate with and are more accessible to practitioners, policymakers and the public. Addressing complex global challenges requires openness in utilizing different academic, policy and business expertise. Lastly, given that we work for a publicly funded university, I believe we should be more open to working on issues that benefit the public and make more of our research accessible to have a better impact.

What are overlooked or unknown benefits of using social media?

Social media changes how we network and converse with each other and how we learn and share knowledge. In fact, we, the authors of this article, discovered and interacted with each other via Twitter back in 2012. From these interactions, we collaborated on articles, journal special issues, workshops and conferences. We have also used social media to fruitfully engage with scholars and other stakeholders outside of our academic fields to co-produce ideas, projects and results that exceed our individual capabilities.

If I am an academic reading this article and want to start engaging on social media, what platform do I choose and how do I get started?

An excellent platform to start with is , whose mission is 鈥渢o connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful.鈥� You can have rich work-related engagements with people interested in you and your research topics via the LinkedIn network you build and curate. You can also learn from and share ideas using the platform鈥檚 discussion boards, groups, and its 鈥榳rite an article鈥� function. Your postings can include text, images, videos, URLs and files such as articles and presentations. And in addition to seeing the 鈥榣ike鈥�, 鈥榗omment鈥� and 鈥榬epost鈥� activity that your posts garner, you can use LinkedIn analytics to see who has viewed and engaged with your postings, where they are located, who they work for and their job titles.

What if the individual does not have time or feel comfortable engaging via social media? Are there other ways to be open, collaborative and share  research outside of social media channels?

Don鈥檛 think social media is just the comprehensive social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. Other social media for impactful knowledge transfer includes podcasts for spoken word broadcasts and academic oriented news platforms such as ,  and  that host news stories and opinion pieces drawing on research. As we explain in our paper, different forms of social media can be used not just for disseminating, but also for the networking, framing, investigating and assessing aspects of research.

Tell us about the 鈥榙ark side鈥� of engaging in social media. What should I absolutely not do as an aspiring social media contributor?

A recognized dark side of social media-enabled openness is how time-consuming it can be to use this boundary-spanning technology to be more open. Dealing with this concern requires the same disciplined, goal-directed time and attention management central to most work. Also, your research goals should set how much time you spend, as well as the value you and society think your research has.

Our paper provides some dos and don鈥檛s for the different approaches to social media-enabled openness. The number and complexity of these points of advice increase the more active and open the approach is. One of our favourites is: don鈥檛 neglect rigour, integrity and nuance when engaged in the promotor approach. Be guided by good scholarship and avoid journalistic sensationalism, exaggeration and hyperbole. We also highlight the importance of using compelling images, videos and captions for the platform and the desired audience outcome to be an effective influencer.

For more: Visit professor McCarthy鈥檚 blog , and read the scholarly impact profile, Tall tales and half-truths: dealing with workplace bullshit.

丁香园AV scholars can reach out to their faculty communications and marketing team for support sharing their work as a news story or on social channels. They can become 丁香园AV media experts, pitch an article to The Conversation Canada, or nominate their work for a Scholarly Impact of the Week profile.