Strathprints Institutional Repository Twittering about Research a Case Study of the Worlds First Twitter Poster Competition Version Referees Approved

Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde. Unless otherwise explicitly stated on the manuscript, Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Please check the manuscript for details of any other licences that may have been applied. You may not engage in further distribution of the material for any profitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute both the url (http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/) and the content of this paper for research or private study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Abstract The Royal Society of Chemistry held to our knowledge the worlds first Twitter conference at am on February This paper reports the details of the event and discusses the outcomess such as the potential for the use of social media to enhance scientific communication at conferencess In particular the present work argues that social media outlets such as Twitter broaden audiencess speed up communication and force clearer and more concise descriptions of a researchers workk The benefits of poster presentations are also discussed in terms of potential knowledge exchange and networking This paper serves as a proofofconcept approach for improving both the public opinion of the poster and the enhancement of the poster through an innovative online format that some may feel more comfortable with compared to facetoface communication Craig E Banks Corresponding author cbankssmmuacuk Randviir EP Ilingworth SM Baker MJ How to cite this article et al Twittering About Research A Case Study of the Worlds First Twitter doi Poster Competition version referees approved FResearch fresearch Randviir EP This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Copyright et al Creative Commons Attribution Licence which permits unrestricted use distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited Data associated with the article are available under the terms of the CC Public domain dedication Creative Commons Zero No rights reserved data waiver The authorss declared that no grants were involved in supporting this workk Grant information


Introduction
An academic conference should be a symposium where academics can report, share, discuss their work, and exchange ideas through a variety of different communication methods.A typical academic conference may consist of several oral presentations, including those from keynote or plenary speakers, in addition to a number of workshops, which offer a more interactive method of delivery.There is also the research poster, a somewhat maligned and misunderstood entity that in some instances feels like an afterthought.However, it could be argued that if knowledge exchange is the fundamental purpose of a conference, which it is, then posters and workshops are far more valuable than oral presentations (Rowe & Ilic, 2009); in which case, are posters being unfairly discredited?
The "all eyes on one" style of oral presentations is extremely limiting in terms of opportunities for the speaker to interact personally with members of the audience.Even in the post-talk questions, time constraints mean that not all questions can be asked, whilst some participants may be unable to comfortably relay their points to the author in that particular environment.Aside from this, the less intimidating nature of poster sessions may be preferable to a larger percentage of researchers, which might explain why the poster presentation saw large increases in the 1990s (Moule et al., 1998).
A poster session is an extended period of academic knowledge exchange.Exhibitors normally stand by their poster and explain their research and findings to passing delegates, inspiring some form of discussion as a dialogue or perhaps in a group.Therefore, it makes sense poster sessions should provide more frequent opportunities for academics to exchange knowledge and create networks.The format of a poster session should theoretically allow for open, informal, and comfortable academic discussion regarding the work presented.Many researchers will have experienced instances of such academic exchanges taking place; yet it is not a form of communication that has been formally investigated in any great detail, but for contributions from Dubois Betty (1985) and Shalom (1993), who independently suggest that the poster presentation was a genre struggling for definition some 20 years ago; the feeling is unfortunately similar within scientific disciplines today.However, it has also been shown that students presenting posters on sensitive topics found that the format of the poster session put them more at ease (Rush et al., 1995).Such an observation would suggest that the poster acts as a message board and focal point for presenters, with sensitive topics such as sexuality made easier to discuss by using posters as a facilitator.This facilitatory role can be extended to other less taboo-orientated subjects and, in principle, the poster could help to facilitate learning amongst researchers, especially those in the early stages of their careers who may be less confident when presenting their research, compared to other, more experienced colleagues.
Despite many efforts by academics to report good poster guidelines (see e.g.Erren & Bourne, 2007;Hess et al., 2009;Moore et al., 2001;Shelledy, 2004;Taggart & Arslanian, 2000), the ideal poster presentation is often absent from poster sessions.Many posters are either poorly designed, or simply pinned to boards and left to stagnate, leaving any observant or enthusiastic researchers with unanswered questions.Even if a poster manages to attract a delegate, the content must be written in a concise, clear, and jargon-free manner to inspire intrigue.Poor written communication can be as detrimental to the message as the oral communication blunders brought about by an ill-prepared delivery.
It therefore comes as no surprise that some organisations have attempted to reimagine the poster.One specific example of this comes from the European Geosciences Union (EGU), who use a concept called PICO (Presenting Interactive COntent) to diversify the knowledge exchange process.The general idea of PICO is for researchers to orally advertise their work in a two-minute flash presentation, in order to encourage the audience to later join them at interactive touchscreen slides, where they can engage with the author personally, in a format similar to the traditional poster session (European Geosciences Union, 2015).Such a form of engagement will no doubt enhance the learning and knowledge exchange experience for the researcher.
With any conference, there are always academics wishing to participate, but who are unable to because of travel and funding restrictions.For some researchers, these restrictions can be detrimental for the dissemination of their research, and can ultimately have a negative effect on their career progression.To combat this, some organisations, like the American Geophysical Union (AGU), have piloted a virtual poster showcase, encouraging researchers to participate at conferences virtually through a digital link.This obviates the requirement for travel, and therefore extra funding for travel purposes.Furthermore, posters are becoming an ever more acceptable route into publication, via academic journals such as in F1000Research, which publishes posters and slides alongside more traditional articles, as a means of reference-worthy academic literature.
Another potential alternative is the use of social media to encourage poster engagement, and this route will form the focus of this paper.The ubiquity of social media is responsible for many of the social behaviours and patterns that have emerged as a result of online communication, and given the power of social media, it could potentially be harnessed to help ensure posters are more greatly discussed, thereby helping to improve ideas and knowledge exchange between academics.This paper presents findings from the world's first Twitter poster conference, organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry, and discusses the potential impact of social media upon the academic poster.

Conference organisation
The Analytical Science Twitter Poster Conference (ASTPC) was organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) journals Analyst, Analytical Methods and Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectroscopy (JAAS).The ASTPC took place from 9am on 5 th February 2015 to 9am on the 6 th February 2015, giving researchers a period of 24 hours to tweet pictures of their poster using the hashtag #RSCAnalyticalPoster.The aim of the ASTPC was to create an opportunity for participants to showcase their research, meet new people, share ideas and learn about some of the latest developments in different areas of analytical science.The conference was open to anyone working in any area of analytical science whose research topic was within the scope of Analyst, Analytical Methods, or JAAS.

Data production
Participants were encouraged to tweet their work, and to be available to answer any questions that interested academics (or indeed members of the general public) might have about their research.There were also prizes for the best Twitter poster, as judged by the scientific committee, with remuneration in the form of an iPod and RSC book vouchers.Furthermore, unlike a regular conference that charges fees to participate, this event was entirely free, and had no registration process other than an email to the journal to verify identity.A scientific committee consisting of 12 academics associated with the RSC were heavily involved in asking questions, generating discussions, and judging posters.Further information regarding the event can be found on the journal's official blog (http://blogs.rsc.org/an/2014/12/19/rscanalyticalposter/).This study was carried out according to the British Educational Research Association's (BERA) ethical guidelines for educational research, with all of the data in this study fully anonymised.All work was also carried out according to the terms of use as indicated by Twitter's policies.

Measurement of Twitter activity
The participants that took part in the ASTPC are now assessed in terms of the number of tweets, area of the world from which the tweet was sent, total number of followers, and potential viewing audience for the tweets.All data is sourced from an online data collection program, available at http://www.followthehashtag.com.The data sample was taken over a period of 63 days, from 9am on 19 th December 2014 to 9am on 20 th February 2015.The data was collected from such an early date because this is when the initial announcement of the hashtag was made and promotion of the event began, however the vast majority of tweets were sent during the 24-hour window of the competition itself.Data collection stopped shortly after the prize winners were announced.Only tweets with the hashtag #RSCAnalyticalPoster were considered for the analysis, and so any figures reported here are most likely an underestimate, precluding any tweets for which the hashtag was absent.All reported times are in Greenwich Meantime.Figure 1 depicts a world map with the locations of persons that contributed to the ASTPC.Over 80 posters were submitted from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Mauritius, the UK, and the USA, with the highest number of contributors coming from European countries.From the diversity shown in Figure 1, it can be inferred that social media can be used to improve the accessibility of the poster by making it freely accessible across the world in a matter of minutes.This further presents opportunities for researchers to exchange comments in the form of tweets, a format that is designed to be both clear and concise.Such communiqués  encourage researchers to think more directly about their research, as they must communicate their point in 140 characters or less.This concise form of communication could help both students and academics to communicate more effectively, particularly students who sometimes struggle to differentiate between description and analysis (Chanock, 2000).

Results and discussion
Table 1 presents the statistics that were published following the ASTPC.During the designated time period, over 1700 tweets were sent with the hashtag #RSCAnalyticalPoster, originating from 378 different contributors.Each participant contributed 4.59 tweets on average to the discussion, with the total number of followers for each person that tweeted amounting to over 380,000.On average, every poster potentially received in excess of 4500 views from several areas across the world (see Figure 1).
Figure 2 displays a tweet and reach timeline that illustrates the frequency of activity across the 63 days of data collection.It is evident that there are two major zones of activity, as one would largely expect: the first when the conference was officially held, and the second when the prize winners were announced.The biggest reach and number of tweets was observed during the main event, followed by the prize announcements.Figure 2 also demonstrates that the majority of the tweets took place during the ASTPC itself, relating to the scientific posters rather than to advertising and promotion of the conference.
Given the nature of a Twitter discussion, it is perhaps more useful to present data relating to the number of contributions that users made as a whole, rather than as an average.Figure 3 depicts the individual contributions by author, and it is apparent that over half Total tweets -the total number of tweets which included #RSCAnalyticalPoster, this includes retweets.
Total audience -the number of people who may have seen #RSCAnalyticalPoster in their Twitter feed.Calculated using the sum of followers from each contributor.
Contributors -number of unique Twitter accounts that used #RSCAnalyticalPoster.
Total impressions -the sum of contributor followers multiplied by the number tweets in which a contributor used #RSCAnalyticalPoster. of the tweeters made only one contribution to the competition (200 users).More encouragingly, over 20% of contributors tweeted five or more times, and almost 10% of the contributors tweeted more than ten times.Indeed, the latter statistic infers that at least some useful exchanges were being made, even if it is difficult to gauge from such data how successful the exchanges may have been.
The overall reach of each individual is difficult to estimate from such a dataset.One contributor may have contributed ten tweets to the discussion that has 300 people contributing, for example, yet only have ten followers, giving an overall reach value of around 310 people.Conversely, one person may have 1000 followers yet only contribute one tweet, yet their reach would be around 1300 people for one tweet alone.Therefore, it is fair to assume that Twitter can have a larger impact if the user has more followers, regardless of the number of contributions.
Another important piece of information relates to the gender distribution at the Twitter conference.According to the RSC membership department, 27.7% of their members are female and 72.3% male, representing an uneven distribution of members by gender.Figure 4 displays the contributions of the ASTPC by gender, with 25.6% of contributions made by females and 74.4% by males.The fact that there is no significant difference between the RSC's overall

25.6%
Female Male membership and the contributors at this event shows that the social media format is not conducive to stimulation of more or less average contributions based upon the gender of the participant.The level of participation in terms of registrants was different to this, however, as 59.6% of the registrants were female.Therefore, whilst a large proportion of females were willing to engage with the competition (a significantly higher proportion than would be expected based on the RSC membership), the discussions appeared to be dominated by male contributors.
The ASTPC was organised as a free event to encourage the sharing and exchange of knowledge through the use of social media.This pilot scheme saw a potential Twitter audience of over a quarter of a million people, demonstrating that posters can quite easily be shared using Twitter, to potentially reach thousands of times more people than they could at even the largest of international scientific conferences.Every day millions of people across the world access Twitter, new Twitter connections are being made, and opinion and discussion is stimulated as a result, while the introduction of hashtags has only served to group discussions together and augment the potential reach of a niche discussion.Even without an organised hashtag or event, a poster can have a larger potential audience than it would at a conference, where the audience will, at the very most, be a few hundred people.The number of useful exchanges between participants is less easy to enumerate, as one cannot quantify the level of interaction between academics in a given poster session and compare it to the number of tweets.A face-to-face conversation about a poster that is in front of two researchers will no doubt be more fulfilling in terms of knowledge exchange, because the conversation is not limited to a few characters.In the Twitter conference, there was an average of 4.5 tweets per person, suggesting that the level of academic discussion was somewhat limited.However, this is not to say that knowledge was not exchanged, but simply that the discussion part of the ASTPC may have been shorter than that of a standard poster session at a conference.This does not account for exchanges that may have been made in private, via emails or direct messaging facilities on Twitter.
As a concept, the Twitter poster conference has some definite advantages over a more traditional poster format, with the data analysed in this study supporting the notion that it is an extremely useful way of broadening the reach and potential audience of a poster.Another advantage is the ease of knowledge exchange for those who lack the confidence or interpersonal skills required for efficient face-to-face communications.It is also apparent that Twitter can decrease the cost of the poster to the researcher because it does not need to be carried as supplementary luggage during air travel; it also avoids potentially exorbitant printing fees at conferences for those who have lost or previously been unable to print their poster.Furthermore, the carbon footprint of a Twitter-only conference is extremely low (unquantified), whereas an international conference will exhibit a substantial carbon footprint, mainly due to air travel.Research by MMU (unpublished report, Jonathan Davies and Professor Callum Thomas) has recently found that an international conference of 178 delegates resulted in the equivalent of 177 tonnes of CO 2 being produced, the majority of which came from the 1.25 million kilometres of air travel required for delegates to travel to the conference.
The nature of Twitter means that more in-depth forms of communication are limited through online exchanges, which could be seen as a disadvantage of the format.However, after the initial exchanges the delegate has the opportunity to extend any interactions further.This can be achieved by the exchange of emails, phone numbers, and Skype IDs for example, or in private messaging facilities over Twitter, meaning that more in-depth chats about the research in question can still be facilitated.The lack of interpersonal communication is disadvantageous, but should not detract researchers from a Twitter conference.It could be used alongside the traditional poster session, or as a separate entity of its own if a researcher is unable, or prefers not, to travel.Given Twitter's recent foray into video streaming, the concept could also be adapted to include oral communications, in which researchers could tweet short video vignettes of their work, or even use Periscope to live-stream the entire presentation.The Twitter format could also potentially be used as a hybrid with the PICO concept discussed in the introduction.
In specific relation to the RSC, the results presented here indicate that whilst Twitter could be used as a tool to address the gender inequality, more needs to be done to encourage female participants to participate in the active Twitter discussions.

Conclusions
The world's first Twitter conference could be considered a success in terms of potential audience, ease of knowledge exchange, lack of travel requirement, and reduction in carbon footprint.The conference reached out to many researchers across the world, and created an opportunity for participants to share their work not only with academics, but also with other interested parties such as writers, industries, friends and family, and even policy makers.Over 80 posters were tweeted with the hashtag #RSCAnalyticalPoster, reaching an audience potentially as large as 375,000 people, and the format of a Twitter poster conference has the potential to allow for research to be shared more quickly and cheaply, and in a more environmentally friendly manner.Despite some potential issues relating to prolonged exchanges, there is no doubt that the hybridisation of the academic conference and social media is something that could and should be seen more regularly in the future.We expect the use of social media to significantly expand scientific conferences due to the advantages identified above, and also to be utilised alongside conferences where physical participation occurs.The benefits of social media can help researchers organise their poster viewings at large conferences, for example future ACS conferences, helping to potentially improve the poster session experience for all participating researchers.Such an improvement in engagement will enhance scientific communication and knowledge exchange, ultimately leading to more successful conferences.

F
Research of the other concerns raised about the limitations of more traditional research poster sessions do not seem to be addressed It is not clear why this was conducted as a competition and whether there would have been the same level of participation without this element So the level of engagement might have been biased by a factor not usual in a poster session It would have been very useful to have a qualitative content analysis of the tweets or at least a sample of tweets to understand what was exchanged in the messages This would add to understanding of the potential value of a Twitter fest for scientific exchange At least an analysis of the scope or build of discussion would be useful How many exchanges were two three or four exchanges How many exchanges were builds on a core comment or additions to an initial exchange It may also have been beneficial to have a discussion as to the implications of the countries participating The conclusions of success based on ease of knowledge exchange lack of travel requirement and reduction in carbon footprint are somewhat questionable given that these are the qualities of social media especially Twitter and so do not reflect on the success or value of this activity It may have been useful to solicit some feedback from participants including the presenters as to how they felt about the experience the quality of the exchange and the interest in doing again The study claims that this pilot scheme saw a potential Twitter audience of over a quarter of a million people demonstrating that posters can quite easily be shared using Twitter to potentially reach thousands of times more people than they could at even the largest of international scientific conferences IMO what is important is that the degree of interaction not potential suggests that effective communication was not demonstrated They acknowledge this by saying that there was an average of tweets per person suggesting that the level of academic discussion was somewhat limited Yes we can reach wider audiences with Twitter but it is a short burst communication medium often fire forget I think that social media and communication technology have a big part to play in the future of poster knowledge dissemination researcher networking but I am not convinced Twitter is equipped to providing any meaningful solution to the current problem of meaningfully disseminating research to the wide body of people who might benefit from it No competing interests were disclosed Competing Interests

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.World map depicting the locations of participants in the ASTPC.Yellow points indicate multiple contributions, whilst blue data points indicate singular or near-singular contributions.Reproduced from data reports obtained from the website http://www.followthehashtag.com.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Number of tweets and reach as a function of time; reproduced from data reports obtained from the website http://www.followthehashtag.com.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Gender distribution of the ASTPC contributions; reproduced from data reports obtained from the website http:// www.followthehashtag.com.

I
have read this submission I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standardNo competing interests were disclosed Competing Interests Biomedical and Environmental Sciences University of Hull Hull UK This is an interesting paper that describes and evaluates a Twitter poster conference The authors have clearly highlighted the potential reach that Twitter provides scientists wishing to engage others with their work and the ways in which Twitter as a medium has distinct advantages over traditional face to face interaction In doing so this paper provides a useful starting point for a discussion about the use of social media as a conference formatThe authors acknowledge the limitations of twitter e g limited ability to have an in depth discussion but from the presented data they are unable to discuss this in any detail In my opinion this is an area that should be investigated further As an initial foray into the field this is a very necessary descriptive rather than investigative piece In order that I might fully evaluate the value of the model I would have like to have more information about the broader themes of the tweets themselves what proportion of them asked answered a relevant question How many were simply an indication of approval or an acknowledgement of participation in the virtual meeting etc I don t think that this information needs to be added to the current paper it makes a valuable initial contribution but I would encourage the authors to follow this work with such an analysis if that is possible There is one minor change that I think would increase the initial readability of the paper On first reading I found myself confused about the nature of the conference perhaps revealing a prejudice based on prior F Research have ten followers giving an overall reach value of around people Conversely one person may have followers yet only contribute one tweet yet their reach would be around people for one tweet alone Therefore it is fair to assume that Twitter can have a larger impact if the user has more followers regardless of the number of contributions Like other social media some people have a lot of followers friends etc whilst others keep their groups more meaningful For example I have s of connections on LinkedIn because I use it to disseminate awareness of my business My ResearchGate profile has relatively few people I follow because I only follow those whose work interests me or who are part of my academic institution As for Facebook I deliberately keep friends to those who are immediately known to me