Making SOS-TIPS happen

Communication & Dissemination (WP5)

I must admit, I have a lot to learn in terms of how to communicate a project. A lot. I will be posting on this regularly, but I thought why not get a head start on things before I leave. So I decided to buy two domain names: smart-searching.eu and smart-searching.org. Why buy two? I don't know. My reasoning was I will use the .eu one to communicate information about how the project is progressing, like through this blog, and I will use the .org one to disseminate findings and place all our outputs on there. To be honest, I'm not sure these need to be separate but I figured, I want both domains. Like I said, not at home in communication :)
At this point, I'm using Google Sites, but will probably switch to something more flexible later, such as Wordpress. I like working with Google Sites initially because if you just want to get content out there fast, and you are less invested in creating a website that fits your aesthetic desires exactly, Sites is fine.
As for social media, I tweeted about my winning the grant, making sure to hashtag and tag everyone I could :) I am observing others in how they tweet because I need to learn the intricacies of this art. Or science? Anyhow, I tweeted and people engaged with it, well, more than they do with my regular tweets. Twitter is not really a thing in Central-Eastern Europe...we use Facebook. I got more engagement there, mainly because I know more people and those contacts are not only professional. I will reflect on this a bit more later...just warming up to the topic of project communication.

The figure below is from the European Commission, it is based on a similarly colorful but different layout, I'm not sure it's too informative, but it does touch on the differences among the three. Very basic idea: you communicate your project and results to the world (tailoring your communication to various audiences), you disseminate your results to (chiefly) academia, and you exploit your results in other projects or sectors.

I created a colorful diagram as well and I've added some specific suggestions, ideas...of course these are just some examples. Also, on the right, you can see my activities/channels (from my proposal). I think social scientists have the hardest time with exploitation. You can think of exploitation as the thing(s) you can do with your results that make the world a better place. This can be on any level: community, EU, global...it can be outside of academia (healthcare, civil sector, industry) or within academia (future work in your discipline, other disciplines). More on communication from the European Commission here.

I'll begin by reviewing the fundamental channels of communication my project will have; this is what I wrote:
Basic communication channels will be established at the beginning of the action: 1) Gitlab repository, 2) Open Science Framework (OSF) project, 3) Website for project and outputs, 4) Blog on completing a MSCA.
Website - check! -, blog - check! -, now let's set up the repository and OSF project. I'll create another Git repo, I won't use my personal one. I've decided this because I have no idea how much space I'll need for SOS-TIPS and I don't want to have to move everything in case I run out of space in my personal one. I'll be creating a new account and a new project to get started.

Gitlab
I signed up with another email and followed these instructions to create a new SSH key for the new account ("Generate an SSH key pair"), and then created a new R project on my PC. Afterwards, I configured my global settings to my other email and user name. To test whether everything worked, I updated the ReadMe file and pushed. I got an error message; I dug a little deeper and realized that I didn't configure my global settings right, I accidentally remained signed in with my personal account, and thus couldn't push to the SOS-TIPS repo until I gave "myself" (personal account) access to the new projected I had created. Anyway, here it is:
My new account: https://gitlab.com/sos-tips
My first group/project: https://gitlab.com/sos-tips/main
New project for the software: https://gitlab.com/r-packages/eta

OSF
Now to create an OSF project that can serve as a more user-friendly proxy for the Gitlab account. The OSF project will be set up so each domain within SOS-TIPS can be a "component" of the main page.
OSF main project page: https://osf.io/ynt7a/
I created the Wiki and added a link to this website and the output website as well. Next, I made everything public, even though it's practically empty. Why? Because I'm entertaining the delusion that people will read my blog and what to see what I'm hyperlinking here, and also, I'm hoping this will be a good way for stakeholders of the project to keep track of what I'm doing. Also, the being a visual person thing again.

(More on Git and OSF on the Open Science page!)

Social media
As I indicated earlier, I'm still learning the art of communication, so I'm observing how others do it. I'm assuming Twitter and Facebook will be my most prominent social media channels. The former involves knowing the right handles and hashtags to incorporate, as well as a whole host of other considerations, which I will go into later (mostly because I'm not sure of them now). Some preliminary thoughts:
Handles: @MSCActions, @CORDIS_EU, @HorizonEU
Hashtags: #MSCA, #H2020, #MSCAFellow, #EUfunded, #EUFundedResearch, #AcademicTwitter, #AcademicChatter, #sciencecommunication, #postdoctoral, #postdoc
More, specific to my project: #OpenScience, #dataviz, #rstats, @QE_soc, @EpistemicUW, @WCER_UW, @CAPHRI_UM, @MaastrichtU
Facebook groups: Marie Curie Individual Fellowship 2021, Marie Curie Fellows Network, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Phd, Masters and Postdoc International Scholarships
I'm thinking, I'll need good visuals to bring people in (i.e. they click for the visual but then read on).
I will need a way to blog so that: I can hyperlink specific blog entries and allow commenting on each entry. Also, I want to keep this format where there are larger topics the entries fall under. I'm guessing it's best to advertise the blog, and website in general, on social media one entry at a time...?

Fake tweet generators here and here; use them to check how your tweet will look :) the second one is good for Facebook posts, too!

Where this got us
OK, so basic communication stuff is set up...we have everything except actual content :) Well, that's not true...although it may seem that way! The blog is actually part of my deliverables; more specifically, we have now begun completing D13 (Gitlab repo) and D15 and D17 (website and blog) in WPs 4 and 5. These will be updated throughout the project life-cycle.

Talks: In-house work-in-progress presentations on tool & study results (D18, 25) and a QE webinar talk (D19).
Associated tasks: negotiate with the Host universities/labs about time and place
Conferences and journals: I will disseminate results in the form of four conference presentations (D20-23) and one journal article (D24). It may seem like promising only one journal article is not enough, but if you look at all outputs together, you will see that they amount to quite a challenge. Furthermore, many conferences, such as ICQE, publish their conference proceedings, so I will have more than one paper in the end. Finally, I may publish more articles if there is time, but I'm not obliged to, which is reassuring. I didn't want to promise more than I can handle.
I also plan to submit something to Open Research Europe, a publishing platform for H2020 projects. I think this platform was launched after I had submitted my proposal, so it's not actually in the research plan, but it's a great initiative.

Okay, so I've been trying to figure out a way to phrase this. I'm extremely awkward when it comes to communicating stuff on social media. But I do know that it's incredibly important in the academic world (see another blog entry here). Let me illustrate with a current example, I hope the person won't mind:

First off, the person tagged us, which led others (who attended or did not attend the workshop) to find us on Twitter and perhaps even elsewhere (ResearchGate, personal websites, etc.). The tweet contains the basic idea of our innovation, which spurs interest in our work, regardless of the workshop. It has a wonderful hashtag: #OpenScience, which will lead people interested in OS to find us through browsing posts labeled with this hashtag. The EHPS Twitter handle is also there, so everyone who is following the Society will also see the tweet. Finally, there is an informative visual with our basic contact information and URL for the materials of the workshop, which will not only be helpful for those who attended and want to revisit the material, but also for those who couldn't make it. Apart from making us feel all warm and fuzzy inside because it's actually positive feedback about the work that we are doing, the post can be retweeted, shared in other ways, liked, etc...in other words, it's a very public way of giving feedback that increases the tagged person's visibility and potential "impact". In my understanding, impact can have a lot of measures, one is determined by your presence on social media, e.g.: how many people follow you (and the connections they have), see what you're posting and engage with it. Although I understand that these topics carry multiple meanings, I'm still most excited about and focused on the "very public pat on the back" aspect. If I try to think more practically: followers on social media, engagement with your posts, (readily available real-time) analytics for your website or OSF project...these are all measures you can report on when talking about how much impact your outputs are likely to have.
So, why follow me on Twitter? Why tweet about anything that I do? Why post something on Facebook? Because all of these actions are gestures that let me know you find my work valuable, think others might benefit from it, and want me and the world to know this. Obviously, if you don't think what you read here (or elsewhere) is noteworthy...then...don't make a note :)

Let me begin with the take-away: If you want to see the effect of your social media (or other) campaign, first set up your site analytics and then launch the campaign.
Yes, you may say: "Duh!" And I would deserve that. I have no excuse.
Once you have a property online (e.g. a website), Google offers you fascinating ways of gaining insight into how successful you are in reaching people. I started taking a deeper dive here because my project entails human-computer interaction, and this is directly related to that. So, in case you knew as little about options available to you as I did, stick around :) These services are things you can set up autonomously, you don't need a specialized company or a communications/tech expert, and it takes very little time. I followed the instructions here and could view real-time analytics about 15 minutes later. You can see how many people are engaging with your content, their basic geographical area, and which pages they are looking at. This can give you insight into things that people are not interested in, and you can consider making them more engaging or visible if you think they would benefit from that piece of content. Another fascinating service Google offers is the Search Console. This offers you insight on general online visibility, organic reach, and technical optimization. For example, you can see how people reached your website (e.g. what they searched for to get there), and whether they were offered an opportunity to view your page (e.g. in the search results; this is called an "impression") but did not take it.

I think a good way to disseminate information about your project is through recording your conference presentations. Here is an example and another example of a 10-minute presentation (press play and wait a minute for it to load). We don't have results yet. But that's ok! Talking about how you designed your project and the methods you will be using to obtain results and why those results are important can also make a great presentation.