Q: Can I share my publication on social media?

Firstly, congrats on having your paper published! You must be both excited and relieved. :-) It’s also great that you are thinking of the next steps – promoting your research – which can be as important a step as the actual research.

Coming to your query, the answer, based on the only the information you have provided, would be: it depends. It depends on whether you have published in a paywalled (subscription-based) or an open access (OA) journal. Within OA too, it depends on whether you published through the gold model or the green model. Here’s a snapshot of what these various models imply.

• With a paywalled journal, as you can understand, sharing is restricted. Firstly, there is initially an embargo period, during which sharing is extremely restricted. It can only be done through a personal site or blog that is not for commercial use or through an institute site. Even after the embargo, it can be shared but not for non-commercial use. Apart from this, there are various conditions that you need to follow. Where it is allowed, as is understandable again, there is a fee allowed, and even then, it’s for a limited period only.
• With OA, through the gold model, you will need to check the Creative Commons (CC) licenses for the journal. With the green model, it is almost as restrictive as the paywalled journal: you can only share on your blog or site.

As there are no further details in your query, it may be difficult to add more information to this. For now, here’s a link to the Elsevier page on sharing terms for published articles: Sharing published journal articles (PJAs) [You may look up a similar page on your published article’s journal site to understand their policy for sharing.]

What we can add though is a few tips for better sharing your research.

• Twitter might be a better social-media platform for research sharing as a lot of academics are present on the platform and avidly discuss new research.
• On similar lines, it would help to set up a profile on Google Scholar, in case you don’t already. Apart from helping you share your papers, Google Scholar helps you keep track of the citations received. Overall, it's a great (and almost-necessary way presently) of building your academic profile.
• In case you wish to know how to share and communicate your research better, you may turn to Impact Science, our dedicated research communication service. Impact Science provides a variety of solutions (press releases, blog posts, and infographics, to name a few) to help you reach the right audience in the right way. You may find out more about the service here: Impact Science

Hope that helps. All the best for communicating this paper – and for papers in the future!