Samantha Davis, clinical associate professor in the Department of Respiratory Care at Boise State University, has published an article about how faculty social media engagement can be considered scholarship. The goal was to develop guidelines for documenting social media scholarship. In making these guidelines, Samantha strove to provide a system for documenting a scholar’s general impact through social media channels as well as highlighting individual social media contributions exemplifying traits such as innovation, education, mentorship, advocacy, and dissemination.
The traditional model of promotion and tenure in the health professions relies heavily on formal scholarship through teaching, research, and service. Institutions consider how much weight to give activities in each of these areas and determine a threshold for advancement. With the emergence of social media, scholars can engage wider audiences in creative ways and have a broader impact. Conventional metrics like the h-index do not account for social media impact. Social media engagement is poorly represented in most curricula vitae (CV) and therefore is undervalued in promotion and tenure reviews.
These advancements in recognizing scholarly work through social media have the potential to change how scholarly work functions across all platforms. Read Samantha’s article here.
By Sidney Stull