SciGirls Reflect: Leveraging Multiple Communities and Networks to Expand Understanding of Professional Development for Informal STEM Educators in Gender Equitable Teaching Strategies was a one-day event that brought together 25 SciGirls Trainers, Educators, and Partner Organization representatives to reflect on their experiences with SciGirls. Data was collected throughout the day via panel presentations, small group discussions, and partner interviews. Nineteen of these participants also conducted follow-up Broadening the Discussion interviews with SciGirls Trainers and Educators to gather
Online knowledge production sites do not rely on isolated experts but on collaborative processes, on the wisdom of the group or “crowd”. Some authors have argued that it is possible to combine traditional or credentialled expertise with collective production; others believe that traditional expertise's focus on correctness has been superseded by the affordances of digital networking, such as re-use and verifiability. This paper examines the costs of two kinds of “crowdsourced” encyclopedic projects: Citizendium, based on the work of credentialled and identified experts, faces a recruitment
Over the past ten years, investments in infrastructure for informal STEM education and science communication have resulted in significant growth in the number and variety of resources and depth of expertise available to members of the STEM research community wishing to develop outreach, engagement and broader impacts activities. This report/white paper recounts some of the developments that led to the existing synergy between Informal STEM Education (ISE), science communication, and STEM research, provides examples of infrastructure and resources that support this work, and identifies areas of
From the life sciences to the physical sciences, chemistry to archaeology, the last 25 years have brought an unprecedented shift in the way research happens day to day, and the average scientist is now simply awash in data. This comment focuses on the integration and federation of an exponentially increasing pool of data on the global digital network. Furthermore, it explores the question of the legal regimes available for use on this pool of data, with particular attention to the application of “Free/Libre/Open” copyright licenses on data and databases. In fact, the application of such
Scientific publishing, here to be considered in a broader sense, as publishing of both specialised scientific journals and science popularisation works addressed to a wider audience, has been sailing for some years on troubled waters. To gather some possible food for thought is the purpose of this brief article.
Free information works. In the sense that Open Access Journals, scientific journals which can be accessed at no cost, thereby guaranteeing free access to everyone, are at the same time able to guarantee the same quality as or even better than- that of traditional journals, which can only be read by those willing to pay a price, be it the cover price or a subscription.
There is a substantial divergence between the standards of integrity associated with "good science" and the problems imposed by the conflict of interest on research, specially in the biomedical field. There are at least as many ways in which information may be altered and the production of new scientific knowledge may be affected as there are links that can be established between researchers, private companies, and editors and staff of the specialized press. The pressures resulting from this high number of connections can affect all stages of research, from trial design to data analysis, from
To appreciate what a huge difference there is between the author of a peer-reviewed journal article and just about any other kind of author we need only remind ourselves why universities have their "publish or perish" policy: aside from imparting existing knowledge to students through teaching, the work of a university scholar or scientist is devoted to creating new knowledge for other scholars and scientists to use, apply, and build upon, for the benefit of us all. Creating new knowledge is called "research", and its active use and application are called "research impact". Researchers are
In the midst of a debate on access to information, the World Health Organization and the FAO have decided to develop a strategy to guarantee the right of poor countries to have free access to scientific publications. This right is often denied, mainly because of high subscription costs. For this reason, universities and research centres in southern countries must forego buying magazines, which are a valuable instrument for updating, and exchanging information on research and scientific issues. This choice has been made in an historical period when the industrialized world is marked by a
Some recent events have brought to the attention of the general public the issue of free access to scientific information. On many occasions basic scientific information has been said to be constantly available to scientists. In truth, a group of scientists (those who live in the developing countries) have long remained on the fringes of the international research community and in part still are, mainly because of the existing difficulties in accessing scientific publications. However, this fact has never been as blatant as it was with the Human Genome Project. Indeed, the project saw an
In the previous three years, 144 90-second Earth & Sky radio shows have been produced under sponsorship of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The impact of these shows was explored with a posttest-only experimental design comparing a treatment group that listened to nine daily NASA shows focused on the topic of Antarctica and a control group that listened to nine daily non-NASA shows about whales. Participants were randomly assigned to groups, which did not differ on the variables of gender, age, ethnicity, education, frequency of hearing Earth & Sky, and interest in hearing
Interest in the possible role for comedy as a medium for communicating and engaging the public in science is growing. However, current research has so far been restricted to exploring whether the content of scientific knowledge is accurate and precise within comedy, and whether the public might be said to understand science better for having watched it. In this commentary, I suggest that this approach neglects the diversity with which scientific ideas and images are used in comedy, particularly when comedy is written without the explicit goal of communicating science. I present my current