Social Media Scholarship and Alternative Metrics for Academic Promotion and Tenure

Traditionally, scholars focused their efforts in the domains of clinical care, research, and education; however, the last decade has witnessed the rise of novel areas of development such as innovation, quality improvement, informatics, and recently, digital scholarship. Academic institutions adapted and began considering these fields for academic promotion and tenure. Social media has become a critical space for the dissemination of knowledge and outreach to community and policy makers and also for the creation of communities of practice. This new realm brings multiple challenges, such as the appraisal of the quality and appropriateness of the content, the evaluation of impact on the academe and general populations, coupled to the creation of a system to reward scholars engaged in this novel endeavor. In this article, we describe the current state of academic promotion and the definition, nature, and merit of digital scholarship. We outline new strategies and tools for the assessment of dissemination and impact of these works, such as altmetrics, and finally, we reference innovative concepts on how to organize and use this digital academia on career promotion and tenure.