Posts filed under ‘media’
Taking a stand
I’m currently in Florence, Italy for PCST2012. I’ve been presenting here on evaluating public engagement with science. I’m also involved in developing the new PCST postgraduate researchers network, which has emerged from a meeting at the European University Institute the day before the conference. A strong theme from the meeting was the need for more accessible information about projects happening and people working in PCST internationally.
That theme has been reiterated within the PCST conference itself. The issue of accessibility came to a head during a plenary yesterday afternoon about the journal Public Understanding of Science, with reflections from past and current editors on its history and future.
In question time, Alice Bell brought up the elephant in the room by angrily critiquing the editors’ attitudes to open access, to which Martin Bauer responded with some valid points about challenges in open access, such as the impact on authors from developing countries.
I’ve made a Storify of some of the tweets from the session, to give you a flavour of what went down.
As a result of yesterday’s session – along with my internal ethical deliberations in recent months – I’ve decided to start boycotting Public Understanding of Science.
I’ll still read it – I have to, it’s one of the main journals in my field – but I’m going to take a risk in my academic career and instead focus on contributing to open access journals, even if they’re lower-impact.
I hope it will lead to change. Here’s a copy of the email I sent withdrawing my submission to PUS this morning:
——– Original Message ——–
From: “Cobi Smith” <cobi.smith@anu.edu.au>
Date: Apr 20, 2012
Subject: Re: PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF SCIENCE – Decision on Manuscript ID PUS-11-0135
To: pusedit@lse.ac.uk
Dear Professor Bauer,
thank you again for your consideration of my paper ‘Public engagement in prioritising research proposals: an experiment’, manuscript ID: PUS-11-0135, for inclusion in Public Understanding of Science.
I was delighted when I received your recommendation to revise and resubmit. This is the first paper I’ve submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, emerging from my PhD research. I was prepared for rejection, so to be given constructive feedback and the opportunity to resubmit was a welcome surprise.
I appreciated the reviewer’s comments, because they reinforced my own doubts about my original submission and prompted me to address them. They also guided me towards literature that I’d not yet come across during my PhD which has been a valuable addition to my knowledge base.
However part of the reason I’m yet to resubmit is my concern about Public Understanding of Science failing to move towards an open access publication model. My research, like many in the community of academics contributing to PUS, is about public access to and involvement in scientific knowledge. So I feel I have an ethical obligation to ensure that my own research and knowledge is shared in a way that is publicly accessible.
I had submitted my paper to PUS in September, and in the time between when I submitted and received your feedback I participated in Open Access Week. Being a panelist for Open Access Week in October strengthened my resolve to only work with open access journals, however when I received your promising feedback I said at the time that I would take up your offer to revise and resubmit.
However I now wish to withdraw my paper for consideration from PUS so I can instead submit it for publication in an open access journal. This decision has been prompted by my participation in the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) conference, specifically the session in which you and past editors of PUS discussed the journal’s history and future.
I understand your concerns about the impact of moving towards an author-pays model of open access on authors from developing countries. I also appreciate the costs involved in running a journal, including the peer review service which I’ve benefited from, as I mentioned earlier. However I think more weight needs to be given to ensuring that research in public engagement with science is open and accessible to those who may use it. This includes many practitioners in museums, governments and non-profit organizations who don’t currently have access to research about and for them – as well as the overwhelming majority of people in the developing world.
I hope that my boycott will be an incentive for those managing PUS to more thoroughly and seriously explore possibilities for moving towards an open access model of publication. I know many people who were in the PCST plenary will be interested to see how PUS follows up from criticisms raised in the session. I’ve mentioned Open Access Week in October to highlight it as an opportune time for PUS to revisit the issue.
My own research and practice has been heavily influenced by the community of academics contributing to PUS. So I genuinely hope that I will be able to contribute to PUS in the future, when such contributions will be accessible to all who may have use for them.
Yours sincerely,
Cobi Smith
—
Update: Subsequent to my post, there has been discussion about this on the Public Understanding of Science blog (which further frustrated me) and on Jack Stilgoe’s blog (which has made me hopeful).
In press
As a journalist-turned-academic, I find the hardest change is waiting for things to be published. When I was a radio journalist I had deadlines every hour. Now I have deadlines every couple of months, and after the deadline I have to wait months more for what I’ve written to be published.
There’s a lot to be said for the satisfying feeling of having your work broadcast within a few hours (or minutes sometimes) of completing it. Though there’s also a lot to be said for not starting work at 6am and not having the pressure of deadlines every hour, which was partly why I changed to specialist writing, which is more lifestyle-friendly.
In the past, when I edited academic documents that had publications “in press”, I used to roll my eyes, because I thought that people were reaching a bit. But now I understand! I probably won’t have anything published in 2009, though there are several things “in press”, not to mention various draft papers that are floating around, waiting for input from busy people.
Such is academia. Welcome to the slow lane.
I got an email the other day approving my articles for the Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Communication, which is being published by Sage. It’s due to be published in July 2010. I wrote about science circuses around the world, a biography of J. Craig Venter, and the theory of deliberative democracy.
I hope at least some of my journal articles are published before then! Watch this space… or grass grow. That might be quicker.
World Nomads podcast documentary scholarship
World Nomads offered a podcast documentary scholarship to Cambodia, to visit the Fred Hollows eye camp and produce a travel podcast. Entrants produced a short travel-focused podcast on the theme, ‘it opened my eyes’.
The winner put a lot more effort into audio production than I did and definitely deserved to win – congratulations Kylie!
I was shortlisted; my story was about my experience covering health issues in the developing world, from my base in the UK.
You can access it direct, or through the page about the podcast documentary scholarship, where you can also hear the other finalists.
Media Issues
Today’s media is a growing and changing industry. Technology is developing and becoming more interactive, key players in the media have to make changes to keep up. Our taste for entertainment gives rise to debates about the quality of broadcasts and publications. Meanwhile discussions about freedom of the press continue, sparked by issues like celebrity privacy and freedom of information.
The information in this book comes from a wide range of sources including government reports and statistics, newspaper features, magazine articles, surveys and literature from lobby groups and charitable organisations.
You can read more about this book on the publisher’s website; you can buy it there, or on Amazon.
Editors: Cobi Smith and Sophie Crewdson
Publisher: Independence Educational Publishers
ISBN: 978 1 86168 408 0
Published: September 2007
