A Vancouver researcher has started a Twitter hashtag that is taking off in the research community.

Raul Pacheco-Vega is a Vancouver-based researcher, educator and consultant in environmental politics and policy. He has conducted research in the field of environmental public policy and politics for over 10 years. His main teaching interests include environmental politics, public policy, water governance, urban and economic geography and comparative and global environmental politics.

Pacheco-Vega blogged about his observations that many scholars have taken to blogging and social media recently. He talked about the “old way” of collaborating with researchers via email and list-servs, eventually meeting in real life. He noted how slow and painstaking that old process was. He then outlined for his students the advantages of using something like Twitter to collaborate. He put out the call:

Fellow academics: please tweet a summary of your research interest. Hashtag #myResearch and please RT widely #phdchat thanks!

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) January 13, 2012

Researchers have taken him up on the challenge and started a hashtag that keeps on rolling. Pacheco-Vega realizes that, in the world of research grants, some people might be hesitant to Tweet their plans.

“A number of scholars (yes, I’ve read your tweets) seem to be skeptical about people wanting to broadcast their plans for a research grant (the closed view of the world in academia where you need to be FIRST to publish something probably needs some expansion). I don’t think that any scholar needs to post exactly what they are planning to do…”

But, there’s one more use of Twitter for the sake of higher research, not just #whyyoweave tweets.