Even if you’re at the beginning of your research career, you can be a mentor.

Mentoring is a wonderful way to pay-it-forward, passing on knowledge and skills to younger generations of scientists. Mentors can help other researchers navigate tricky grant application processes, handle complex political situations in the lab, and connect with diverse colleagues and potential collaborators.

How does mentoring affect your impact? Well, impact isn’t all about citations and prestige–it’s about the effect you have on others, too.

And mentoring isn’t always the “wise professor helps student” scenario that many imagine it to be. PhD students can be mentors to other students, researchers can “peer mentor” other researchers, and increasingly scientists at all stages in their career are using the Web to mentor each other.

In today’s challenge, we’ll mostly tackle the latter type of mentoring: leveraging social media to advise and support other researchers.

First, let’s define mentoring.

Mentoring, loosely defined

Mentoring is often defined along the lines of “train[ing] or advis[ing] the mentee…so that they can work more effectively and progress,” but it’s so much more than that. And mentoring also no longer fits the rigid “wise professor helps student” scenario that I mentioned above.

In general, mentoring is about:

• Listening carefully and giving impartial advice
• Connecting junior researchers with opportunities
• Helping others without the expectation of anything in return

And there are a number of specific activities that mentors tend to offer. National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity’s Kerry Ann Rockquemore defines those as:

• Professional development (time management, conflict resolution, project planning, grant writing, basic organizational and management skills).
• Access to opportunities and networks (research collaborations, funding , etc.).
• Emotional support (to deal with the stress and pressure of the tenure track and life in a new location),
• A sense of community (both intellectual and social).
• Accountability (for research and writing).
• Institutional/political sponsorship (someone to advocate their best interest behind closed doors).
• Role models (who are navigating the academy in a way they aspire to).
• Safe space (to discuss and process their experiences without being invalidated, questioned, devalued and/or disrespected).

Did you notice how most of these activities can be done by anyone, at nearly any stage of their career?

If you’re a graduate student, you can mentor undergraduates. And if you’re an early career researcher, you can do the same for graduate students, and senior researchers can do the same for you. Plus, researchers of similar standing with differing backgrounds can “peer mentor” one another. It’s all about paying it forward.

We tend to think about mentoring as only being face-to-face rap sessions, but the truth is that the Internet allows us to mentor people we’ve never met through a variety of means. The first of which is the idea of “distributed mentoring.”

Getting started with ‘distributed mentoring’

Distributed mentoring is a movement started by Diana Kimball to open up the practice of mentoring beyond the confines imposed by physical location. According to Diana, you can be a “distributed mentor” by creating a space on your website where you proclaim your interest in mentoring others over the Internet on a variety of topics.

Those who are interested in being mentored can read through your list and contact you via email to begin the process. You can “meet” via video chat or over the phone, as often as you’d like.

But distributed mentoring isn’t done in just one way. You don’t have to join Kimball’s movement to be a distributed mentor in essence. Instead, you can seek out others on social media who are in need of help.

There are many places on the Web where you can find junior researchers hungry for guidance. We’ll highlight three: Academia Stack Exchange, ResearchGate, and Twitter. Let’s break down how you can use each platform to help others.

Academia Stack Exchange

Academia Stack Exchange is a spin-off from Stack Exchange, a popular computer programming Q&A site. On Academia Stack Exchange (Academia.SE), users can ask about most aspects of academia: how to format a CV, the etiquette of handling a reference request from someone who never showed up for class, where to find certain types of data or articles, and so on–the sorts of questions a mentee will often ask.

But there’s more to Academia.SE than that. Basically, the site works like this: someone posts a question and others answer it. Members of the Academia.SE community can vote answers up or down, based on quality. Points are assigned based on both what you contribute (questions, answers, edits, and so on) and whether others have voted your content up or down. And you accumulate points over time, gaining reputation, badges, and the ability to do more things on the site as your points increase.

Here’s how to use Academia.SE  for distributed mentoring: browse Academia Stack Exchange by topic (and also wander over to other Stack Exchanges, like this one for Chemistry or this one for Math) to find questions that match your expertise. And once you’ve signed up for an account, you can begin to answer questions.

If you’ve chosen to use your real name when signing up–which I recommend–others will be able to recognize your contributions. But whether pseudonymous or not, you’re still helping others, which is the whole point of mentoring.

ResearchGate

Until now, we’ve mostly talked about ResearchGate as a platform to share your scholarship. But it also can be used to reach out to and help other scientists.

ResearchGate’s Q&A feature allows scientists to pose a question to others that have listed certain skills and expertise in their profile, and anyone matching those skills can answer.

Here’s how it works: under the “Topics” section of your profile, you can add and edit subject areas you’ve got expertise in. Then, on the Q&A section of the site, ResearchGate will prompt you with questions it thinks you can answer, based on the Topics you’ve listed in your profile.

Because ResearchGate is closely linked with your scholarly identity, it’s easy to get recognition for your contributions. Points are also added to your RG score based on the number of questions you answer, which gamifies the experience for a bit of fun.

Some have praised ResearchGate’s Q&A feature over that of similar services, but others criticize the site for the “useless” questions posed in the Q&A. You’ll have to judge for yourself whether the questions posed in your area of expertise are worth answering, and what value you can get out of engaging others on the site.

Twitter

Twitter can be used for all kinds of mentoring and support activities, especially when using and following hashtags.

Hashtags like #madwriting can be used for accountability: many share their writing schedule with others like you’d share your “days since my last cigarette” with friends–to hold you to a promise of productivity and responsibility.

General hashtags like #phdchat, #gradchat, and #ecrchat are often used by students and early career researchers to pose questions and ask advice, as are hashtags for disciplines. Check in on these hashtags regularly and answer any questions that arise or offer to share your experience and advice. Not everyone will be interested, but many will appreciate your willingness to take a few minutes out of your day to help them.

The same goes for those that you’re already following on Twitter. Read through your homepage Twitter stream each time you login to see if anyone you’re following could use advice or support; and support them in any way you can, to the extent that you’re comfortable doing so.

One downside of using Twitter to mentor can be the sheer amount of unrelated tweets you have to sift through to find the stuff worth chatting about. Hashtags are a partial answer to that question, but right now, there’s not much you can do to fully solve it.

Limitations of distributed mentoring

It can be hard to create a safe space for others using very public forums like those mentioned above. Similarly, it’s difficult–and potentially risky–to offer access to opportunities and networks to someone you don’t know very well.

One way around these problems is to make initial connections on public-facing social media sites, if you want to, then exchange private contact information and continue mentoring via email, videochat, or telephone.

If you’re a stranger to a potential mentee, go slowly — mentoring can get complicated fast, and overcommitment and overinvolvement helps no one. To start with, it’s better to offer too little of yourself than too much.

Homework

Choose two platforms to experiment with as a distributed mentor. Then, sit back and “lurk” for a while, spending your time reading previous Q&As to get a feel for how it works on each platform, and answer at least one question on each platform. Additionally, consider setting up a “/mentor” section of your website and formally joining the Diana Kimball’s Distributed Mentoring movement.