Everything I have been reading has pointed to one conclusion… we need to openly share what we create in support of Extension. A model of information control once served Extension well, but that has significantly changed in recent years. The information that Extension has provided to the public is no longer scarce, it is available for the taking on the Internet. Schmidt and Rosenberg best explain it in their book, How Google Works.
Today, three factors of production have become cheaper—information, connectivity, and computing power—affecting any cost curves in which those factors are involved. This can’t help but have disruptive effects. Many incumbents—aka pre-Internet companies—built their businesses based on assumptions of scarcity: scarce information, scarce distribution resources and market reach, or scarce choice and shelf space. (Schmidt & Rosenberg, 2014, pp. 12-13)
Giving It Away
Educators like Curtis Bonk, Clay Shirky, Eric Sheninger, and Martin Weller along with business leaders like Dan Pontefract, Eric Schmidt, and Jonathan Rosenberg advocate for create quality materials but more importantly making them digitally available for others to access and use. As I noted in my book review of The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself, Jantsch also encourages giving away content as a means to build trust with potential clients. He believes that leveraging the Internet is a key to success.
PageRank
There is another factor that comes into play as we strive to have individuals access and use Extension content. We must talk about our content in daily practice. Google searches raise the status of content in the search engine results page (SERP) based on PageRank.
PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In simple terms, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site’s PageRank. Not all links are equal: Google works hard to improve the user experience by identifying spam links and other practices that negatively impact search results. (How Google Search Works, 2014, Serving Results)
The bottom line is that you can not simply put content on the Web and expect someone to find it. You have to talk about your content and provide links to your content. Links can be provided from other Web pages, social media references, etc.
Open Access Effect
Research is beginning to show that opening access to research increases readership and citations (Ale Ebrahim et al., 2013; Antelman, 2004; Eysenbach, 2011; Galloway & Rauh, 2013). As noted above, simply placing your content online is not enough, you have to link to it and talk about it. Here are some additional ideas for increasing readership and citations:
Give and thou shall receive! Share, share, share!
Additional Reading
- Book Review: New Business Networking: How to Effectively Grow Your Business Network Using Online and Offline Methods
- Book Review: Working Out Loud: For a Better Career and Life
- Book Review: Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered
- Our Processes for Providing Faculty Support
- #ATD2015: Writing Blogs, Articles, and Books to Boost Your Career by Cathy Fyock
- Book Review: A World Gone Social
References
Ale Ebrahim, N., Salehi, H., Amin Embi, M., Habibi Tanha, F., Gholizadeh, H., Motahar, S. M., & Ordi, A. (2013). Effective strategies for increasing citation frequency. International Education Studies, 6(11). doi:10.5539/ies.v6n11p93
Antelman, K. (2004). Do open access articles have a greater research impact? College & Research Libraries News, 65(5), 372–382.
Eysenbach, G. (2011). Can tweets predict citations? Metrics of social impact based on Twitter and correlation with traditional metrics of scientific impact. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 13(4), e123. doi:10.2196/jmir.2012
Galloway, L., & Rauh, A. (2013). Social media and citation metrics. SLA Contributed Papers. Retrieved November 12, 2014, from https://www.sla.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Sun-Galloway-SocialMedia.pdf
How Google Search Works. (n.d.). Retrieved November 12, 2014, from https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/70897?hl=en
Schmidt, E., & Rosenberg, J. (2014). How Google Works (First edition.). New York: Business Plus.
