Social media is, despite it’s challenges and limitations, an incredibly powerful (and widely used) professional tool for scientists. One common use of social media is to share one’s research with colleagues, or to find papers shared by others to read.
And yet, despite the idea that sharing links to research online is not exactly new, far too many journals still have not adapted to the digital era. The end result is a link with a preview image that looks bizarre or unrelated, if you can read it at all.
For example, a great new paper about the conservation of carpet sharks was published last week. Carpet sharks are beautiful animals, and the research team has lots of full-color stunning images. The paper also includes some great figures. But here’s what that paper looks like when I share it on my Bluesky page and on my Facebook page, respectively:
There was also an excellent recent paper about Atlantic nurse shark research and conservation. Again, this is a beautiful animal, and again the research team has stunning images. Again, the paper has some great figures. Here’s what it looks like when I share the paper on my Facebook and Bluesky:
Here at least you can see the preview image, and on Bluesky you can read it clearly enough to see the title of the journal, but that’s the generic journal logo. That’s fine, certainly better than the example above. But it could be so much better.
How about a third recent paper about the breaching behavior of Blacktip sharks that aggregate together in huge schools, a paper full of amazing eye-catching imagery? Here’s what it looks like when I share this on Bluesky:
Eagle-eyed readers will note that the preview image here is that of a sea cucumber, not a Blacktip shark. (Why? Because that’s the featured cover article in this issue of that journal, an excellent multi-disciplinary journal that doesn’t exclusively focus on Blacktip sharks.)
And yet, whenever I share articles like that, an average of between 5 people and half the freakin’ internet feel the need to say “hey did you know that’s not a Blacktip shark.” (Seriously, it’s the most common feedback I get in response to sharing other peoples’ research that I share, beating out “cool paper” and “this is behind a paywall and I cannot read it.”) Perhaps in an era when articles are shared individually and not as part of of a physical copy of the journal you get in the mail, we don’t need the preview image to be the cover of the issue? After all, when you share a Washington Post article that was featured on page A14 of the physical edition of the newspaper, the preview image is related to that story, it’s not an image of the above-the-fold front page headline. In this case, I personally would be pretty surprised if very many people read the Blacktip shark paper and thought “I wonder what’s going on with those sea cucumber in the preview image” and chose to read that paper too.
And sure, I share more peer-reviewed scientific journal articles on social media than most people do, I’m perhaps not a typical use case*. But lots of people want to share their own work with their colleagues and friends, enough that a sizable chunk of my income comes from helping people to do this more effectively. After the time they put into the research and writing, and the cost of publishing the paper, it should at the very least look professional and decent when they share it.
What could this look like? The preview image could be either be one of the figures from the paper, or an image of one’s study site or study species not otherwise part of the paper, or even an institutional logo that displays clearly and legibly. There are many possible solutions. But a first step here is acknowledging that this is a problem.
*Out of curiosity, I asked the fine folks at Altmetric how many peer-reviewed scientific journal articles were shared on social media in 2024, by the way, and their answer blew me away. In 2024, at least 13 million different social media accounts across Twitter, Bluesky, and Facebook shared over 17 million papers on social media. That’s… a lot! Perhaps it’s time that journals that charge us thousands of dollars to share our work adapt to the digital science communication landscape.