Breaking down walls
Check out this great article by Buddhini Samarasinghe on nature.com‘s soapbox series (http://goo.gl/O6csd6). Buddhini explain two barriers to science: the paywall for scientific publications and the jargon-wall. She also describes her efforts in science outreach. If you aren’t following her already, you need to circle her now.
I’ve been thinking of writing a post about OpenAccess journals because I assume that the journals are like the jargon that’s in them. The lay public doesn’t know which journals are reputable and which one’s are so-called predatory journals. Predatory journals send unsolicited emails to scientist, students, etc. saying how great and open their journals are. What they don’t advertise is that it cost quite a bit to publish in some of those journals. My colleague had a situation where he was reviewing a poorly written manuscript and the editor was trying very hard to get my colleague to be more lenient. The fact that, that journal charges $1,000 per manuscript might have been a factor.
Image source: http://goo.gl/HOScG7
August 21, 2013
Thanks for the share Chad Haney hopefully it will bring out more of our fellow colleagues into social media for science outreach purposes and spark a discussion about how we can all work together to improve the public’s knowledge of science!
August 21, 2013
There’s a funny thing about finding that ‘sweet spot’ between too technical and too dumbed-down: it seems that you always get a comment from the technical side that you’ve “missed something”. Then while responding to that, the conversation gets jargony and scares off would-be commenters on the layman side. :-S
Chad Haney
August 21, 2013
Malthus John for Google+ I lean towards keeping it simple. However, I have caught myself using jargon just because it’s a huge part of my daily vocabulary.
August 21, 2013
Definitely! Even in your community, where there are plenty of experts, I think the majority of readers (or potential readers) are going to be on the laymen side, even if for just that topic. None of us are experts in everything!
August 21, 2013
Interesting, jargon is a bottleneck but a person who has the ability to reason can always understand the substance of a problem. Explaining the process of ratiocination, premise & variables should help, there is definite value in conveying the ‘scientific process’ abstracted from specifics.
August 29, 2013
Chad Haney Looking forward to your post on the exploitation on Open Access. The current model is flawed and you’re right: while the general public can do a Google search and access these articles, they may not be high quality. Researchers get “invites” to publish in these journals that require high payment for publication. It is tantamount to a scam, of both researchers and the public.
August 29, 2013
Thank you Zuleyka Zevallos I appreciate the support. I think I want to also discuss what impact factors mean, tying into your post.