My two favourite professional social networking sites: LinkedIn and ResearchGate – how they can help you, or hurt you

Social networking sites are a pervasive presence on the internet. In addition to providing entertainment for millions of people, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others have been used by commercial and governmental entities to engage with consumers, as well as for health education and health promotion. The medical literature is replete with research regarding social media. A quick search on the US National Library of Medicine’s PubMed.gov website yielded 1064 different papers mentioning Facebook, dated from 2008 to the present time. The impact of medical journals has moved beyond the counting of citations in articles to the counting of mentions in tweets and blogs (1). For the individual clinician and researcher there are several available options to participate in social media (2). There are physician-oriented sites such as Sermo.com, which as per their webpage has 343,000 members that are verified and credentialed US and UK physicians. Doximity.com is another physician-site, with the tag-line of ‘Over 50% of U.S. physicians have chosen Doximity as their professional network’. QuantiaMD.com offers the opportunity to view brief presentations, ask questions and earn points redeemable for amazon.com gift cards. Although not geared towards medical professionals specifically, LinkedIn.com is one of my personal favourites. It allows the user to have all their professional contacts in one place, provides for easy messaging between linked members, and makes it easy for others to find out about what you do if you take advantage of the opportunity to complete your professional profile. I use it as my webpage so that people can readily find me, and to foster educational and research collaborations (https://www. linkedin.com/pub/leslie-citrome/12/3a8/42b). Every month I post a notice about the latest issue of the International Journal of Clinical Practice. For a time I moderated a private discussion group with trainees at my University using the infrastructure afforded by the LinkedIn website. Access to LinkedIn is free, but premium features such as being able to find out who has looked at your profile, and obtaining access to contact information for people outside of your network, are on a paid subscription basis. ResearchGate.com is the other networking website that I routinely access. You can elect to receive notices of papers published by people you are “following” and you get notifications if one of your own papers is cited as well. Clinicians and researchers can ask me for papers that I have written, and I can easily upload individual copies to them. There is the ability to upload papers for general downloading but copyright concerns can make that inadvisable. There is a means of keeping track of profile views, publication downloads and publication views of your work, as well as a running count of citations in other papers to your work. Calculated is a “RG Score” based on the publications in your profile and how other researchers interact with your content on ResearchGate. “Impact Points” are also displayed, based on how often publications are accessed. Access to ResearchGate is currently free. Advantages to using LinkedIn and ResearchGate include easily connecting with people you work with or want to work with. I use both sites strictly for professional and business purposes. This is different from Facebook where many posts and interactions can be of a personal nature among family and friends. An important caveat to the use of social media is to be mindful of one’s professional image. Damaging and unprofessional behaviours include violations of patient privacy, using profanity, and in general, negative or caustic remarks about people, employers or organisations. Participating in LinkedIn and ResearchGate does entail some responsibilities. If these sites are not what you had expected and you are no longer interested in them, it is best to close out your account. Otherwise your professional colleagues may wonder why you are ignoring them when they ask you to connect with them. Overall, social networking sites offer an unparalleled opportunity to reach out across the globe and interact with like-minded individuals. What’s your favourite site?