Local Coordination Unit of the Regional Research Promotion Programme (RRPP) for Bosnia and Herzegovina organized a seminar followed by a discussion about „The Future of Research Impact: New Technologies for Better Promotion and Cooperation“. The event was held in Sarajevo on 9 February 2017.

Web platforms and social media have become one of the main tools for research promotion. They change the visibility and accessibility of research, and beyond - the way of thinking about research. The introduction of services such as GoogleScholar, ResearchGate and Academia.edu helped improve research promotion and networking among researchers. This networking and promotion space subsequently expanded to social networks such as Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, as well as to the so-called blogosphere. 

The need for professional discussion has surpassed the initial goal of simple promotion. Researchers now agree that the social media have an important role in achieving research impact, but some also consider them as a tool for research development. New technologies allow researchers to get direct feedback and comments from experts in the field much before the completion of their work. In addition, web platforms are broadening the impact of research to a wider social sphere.

Professor Andy Miah, Chair in Science Communication & Future Media at the School of Environment & Life Sciences, presented a strategic approach to social media and other web-based tools in research promotion and development. He also talked about positioning on online platforms in order to reach the ultimate goals of promotion – presentation of research results, recognition in academic circles, feedback from experts in the field or influence on key stakeholders.

Around 35 participants attended the event, including academics, researchers and public policy analysts.

Video from the event is available at the following link:  http://bit.ly/2n9g7ht

About Prof Andy Miah:

Professor Andy Miah, PhD, (@andymiah) is Chair in Science Communication & Future Media at the School of Environment & Life Sciences, University of Salford, Manchester. He is a Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, USA, and a Fellow with FACT, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, UK.

Professor Miah is the author and co-author of several articles and book chaptes on social media, including chapters on Yahoo! and Virtual Worlds in the Encyclopedia of Social Networks (Sage, 2011). He has published several journalistic articles about the use of social media in research promotion, including two articles in Times Higher Education on Why academics should make time for social media, and The A to Z of Social Media for Academia, as well as the article Will Technology Kill Universities? in Time, and Twitter Journal: Would you share your original research on social media?, in The Guardian. 

Professor Miah’s research discusses the intersection of art, ethics, technology and culture, and he has published widely in the area of emerging technologies, particularly as related to human enhancement. He has published over 150 academic articles in refereed journals, books, magazines and national press on the subjects of cyberculture, medicine, technology and sport. 

He is currently part of a European Commission project called Digital Futures 2050 and the Ministerial Advisory Group on Digital Participation with the Scottish Government.

This event was organised with the support of the Regional Research Promotion Programme (RRPP) in the Western Balkans. The RRPP is coordinated and operated by the Interfaculty Institute for Central and Eastern Europe (IICEE) at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). The Local Coordination Unit in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the Center for Social Research Analitika. The programme is fully funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. http://rrpp-westernbalkans.net