Journals play a key role in bridging knowledge gaps

Lia Labuschagne

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What role can scientific journals play in bringing the knowledge divide, not only between North and South, but also between researchers and policymakers?

A lively general discussion at Forum 2012 focussed on the role of journals in knowledge transfer in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights. But the same issues relating to disseminating scientific information also apply to other disciplines.

Some current topics relating to the international output of scientific journals were introduced by Marge Berer, editor of Reproductive Health Matters, and Ann Strode, senior lecturer at the School of Law, University of KwaZulu Natal, and editorial advisory board member of AIDS Care.

Journal articles can help bridge the gap between research and policymakers (Credit: Reproductive Health Matters)

Berer commented that “there has never been so much information before, nor so many means of disseminating and using it”.

Participants in the general discussion nevertheless pointed out that, especially in developing countries, there is often a big time lag between research being completed and finding its way into text books.

Factually outdated information is often still being taught. And although new health and other policies may be adopted, there may be no change in teaching material.

Scientific journals provide a useful link across this divide, partly because their up-to-date research findings and information is increasingly becoming available in accessible, electronic format to a global readership of academics and practitioners within various disciplines.

Advocates and lobbyists also use the information in journals as the basis of advancing well-founded arguments for change of policies and practices.

Strode said journals such as AIDS Care are therefore used by both researchers and policymakers as a high-quality source of knowledge that they can provide from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

Some additional ideas to emerge from the discussion of ways to use the contents of scientific journals to aid development included translations of articles into local languages, and selecting key pieces of writing on specific topics to be made them available as thematic packages.

In terms of the North/South divide, Berer pointed out that “more authors from developed countries than from developing countries have access to the resources to publish in international journals”.

To help to redress this imbalance, she said that RHM gives preference to papers about developing countries by authors from those countries, or written with authors from those countries.

Broader issues discussed at the session included the continued debates around open and closed peer review processes, formal recognition for reviewers, and questions of ownership and funding.

Lia Labuschagne is a freelance journalist based in Cape Town

This blog post is part of our Forum 2012 coverage — which takes place 24–26 April 2012. 

Social media rises to the challenge of health communication

Lia Labuschagne

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Health researchers should consider the creative use of social media – and in particular of new communication tools such as “edutainment” – as part of a comprehensive communication strategy because, like anything else, research findings need to be effectively marketed.

In the words of Kirsten Patrick, clinical reviews editor of the British Medical Journal, addressing a session of Forum 2012 devoted to the topic of science and social media, “it is our job not only to do the research, but to get it out there.”

Soul City: Showing how "edutainment" can communicate health messages (Credit: Soul City)

One example of how edutainment can be done successfully is demonstrated by Soul City in South Africa – or to give it its full title, the Soul City Institute for Health and Development Communication.

This uses an entertaining storyline in television drama to influence behaviour and practices relating to health, nutrition and sexuality.  Recent themes have included medical male circumcision and the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

Bongiwe Ndondo, monitoring and evaluation manager of Soul City, told the session that edutainment as a technique for transmitting social messages through entertainment had been practiced in traditional societies for centuries.

Soul City has brought the idea up-to-date by translating this concept into national television series, supported by 23 radio talk shows on seven community radio stations, printed material, internet-based social media such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and mobile applications, in particular Young Africa Live.

She explained that research is the cornerstone of the roadmap leading to the production of a new television series, which is always “based on an extensive and rigorous research process that ensures quality, relevance and effectiveness.”

Denis Jjuuko, a media and communication consultant from Uganda, argued that social media could stimulate discussions and fill gaps left by reports in traditional, mainstream media. This was especially important in countries with limited press freedom, or where mainstream media shy away from sensitive topics.

Jjuuko said that the rapid growth of mobile technology in Africa provided an important new distribution medium. “Social media has become mainstream, and can sometimes do what other media cannot do, especially in some parts of Africa, where mainstream media may, for example, be virtually closed when you deal with certain issues of sexuality.

“In such cases you can use mobile technology and social media such as blogs and video on YouTube to get your message across.”

ResearchAfrica managing editor Linda Nordling argued that social media “give you quite a lot of control, because you can respond and you do not rely on an intermediary such as a journalist as in the traditional media.”

She also said that social media were also “important in terms of ‘narrow casting’:  talking not only to many people, but the right people”.

In the discussion that followed the presentations, participants pointed to some of the difficulties that researchers have encountered with social media, and indeed with attempting to engage in the public communication of their research results.

These includes the dangers of being misquoted, ethics issues – particularly when sensitive clinical trials were involved –  fears around the improper use and interpretation of data, and the adverse effects of an indiscriminate dissemination process, especially when researchers were working on sensitive topics.

Speakers on the panel also included contributions by SciDev.Net editor David Dickson and Brenda Zulu, founder of Africa Interactive Media in Zambia.

Lia Labuschagne is a freelance journalist based in Cape Town

This blog post is part of our Forum 2012 coverage — which takes place 24–26 April 2012. 

Last thoughts from PCST … and what next?

Luisa Massarani
Latin America regional coordinator, SciDev.Net

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Well, the conference is finished, and my luggage ready for the 6am morning flight. Before leaving, I asked Massimiano Bucchi, co-chair of PCST 2012, to give me his comments on this year’s conference.

“It was an intense programme. The sessions and discussions were of very good quality,” he said.

Bucchi said the meeting had strengthened “the interaction between research and practice” in science communication, and said for him one of the highlights this year was a meeting of PhD students, which attracted some 60 people from around the world who are engaged in science communication research.

“It was a good opportunity for networking and to make more visible what Italian institutions are doing in terms of public engagement,” Bucchi said.

There was also an announcement in the final session from Toss Gascoigne, about an important change to the PCST network, of which he is the president.

“The network has been working in an informal way for more than two decades, headed by a scientific committee,” he said.

“Now, we [have] decided to make a structural change toward a formal network, with legal status,” he said, adding that the constitution of the network and a membership scheme will be discussed in the coming months.

After the final session, the scientific committee — of which I am a member — met to take some decisions.  We approved two workshops to be held in 2013; one in New Zealand and other in Indonesia.

Then we had to decide where to hold the PCST 2016. We received two bids from two very exciting cities: Nairobi, in Kenya, and Istanbul, in Turkey. Very exciting, isn’t it? And the decision was… Istanbul!

But before the Istanbul conference there is, obviously, PCST 2014 which will be in another part of the globe: Brazil! I will be one of the chairs of that meeting, sharing the responsibility with Germana Barata.

Two strong institutions will host the conference: the Museum of Life/House of Oswaldo Cruz/Fiocruz, and Labjor/State University of Campinas.

It is very exciting, since it will be the first PCST conference to be held in the Americas. We want to show that Latin America is the stage of an increasingly vibrant science communication community, strong in both practical and academic approaches.

After having had beauty, honesty and quality as the theme of this year’s conference — so apt in such a wonderful city as Florence — we want to add social and political concern ingredients to the discussion on science communication.

So the 2014 meeting will have as its theme, “Science communication for social inclusion and political engagement”. It will be held in Salvador, another fantastic city, with an extremely diverse culture.

See you there!

This blog post is part of our Public Communication of Science & Technology (PCST2012) conference coverage.

Science centres and museums at PCST 2012

Luisa Massarani
Latin America regional coordinator, SciDev.Net

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Marzia Mazzonetto, Ecsite Project Coordinator and my good friend after years of working together in science communication, heard that I was writing a blog on PCST 2012 and got “jealous” — in the good sense, of course. She has attended several sessions on science centres and museums during the conference and has written a post for us. Cool, isn’t it? Here it is:

Science centres and museums all over the world are one of the places where public communication of science and technology is put into practice. They were also the focus of some of the several presentations that have been given during the two intense days of the PCST conference.

Different issues have been raised by the experts from the field, showing that science centres and museums face similar challenges and innovation needs as the rest of the wide science communication community.

One of the questions that was asked and discussed during these sessions was how science centres are and should be forums for communicating controversial scientific issues.

Underwear in a 2010 exhibition at the State History Museum in Moscow, Russia

Catherine Franche, director of Ecsite, the European Network of Science Centres and Museums, mentioned a controversial list recently published in the US about objects that should never be shown in museums, which even included such items as underwear or images of naked human bodies.

How can be science explained in museums without being able to show some of the basic elements of biology and the world around us?

Sharon Ament, director of public engagement at the Natural History Museum in London, United Kingdom, presented some interesting examples of how her museum managed recently to use objects from its own collections to present an exhibition and associated activities on controversial topics such as slavery, evolution and sex.

Homo Habilis skull from a 2009 exhibition at London's Natural History Museum

The environment was a key theme of several presentations.  It’s not just journalists who face the pressure of reporting on environmental issues; museum experts and researchers also fear a lack of real connection between what is being shown and told and the critical issues with which to engage the public.

A interesting presentation on the topic was given by Joëlle Le Marec, from the Université Paris Diderot in France, during a highly multicultural session entitled “On the meaning of participation and democracy in different cultural and social contexts”.

Joëlle talked about how the theme of the environment “entered” science museums in France. She said that while in the 1970s and 80s environmental issues were presented as elements of reflection between inhabitants and their own territories, nowadays the environment is presented as a scientific object, more closely related to progress and international development and events rather than something connected to local issues.

Butterfly from Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil

Is this new narrative of environment in science centres contributing to making people feel like environmental issues are something very far away from them?

Several other sessions at PCST 2012 have offered interesting experiences and studies coming from activities in science museums on topics such as evolution, genetically modified organisms and climate change. One more session worth mentioning was “Science and governance in a knowledge society: Research and best practices on the role of science centres and museums”.

Organising activities and exhibitions in a museum means a lot of work but it’s also fun, interesting and sometimes very difficult and challenging. Paola Rodari, project manager at Sissa Medialab in Trieste, Italy — and an expert in museum studies — said something that museums should never stop doing is evaluation; reflecting and possibly researching the effectiveness of the exhibitions and activities that they offer.

Museums are places where people can get together to discuss, dialogue and share opinions on science issues, but also contribute directly to the museum’s growth by sharing their hopes and expectations. They are also places where, in some instances, visitors can interact directly with scientists who have labs and run research directly inside the museum complex (as is the case with the Nature Live Labs at the Natural History Museum in London).

A young visitor to the Houston Museum of Natural Science in the United States

How to evaluate and learn more about how these activities and issues are pushing science centres and museums to evolve, and how they are directly influencing science research and science policy is food for thought for future PCST conferences for sure!

This blog post is part of our Public Communication of Science & Technology (PCST2012) conference coverage.

Sustainable development through comics

Luisa Massarani
Latin America regional coordinator, SciDev.Net

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Communicating science in Mexico, as in any developing world country, can be a big challenge. Most of Mexico’s estimated 100 million inhabitants have only received eight years of basic education. For every 100 inhabitants over the age of 15 years, eleven females and seven males are illiterate.

On the other hand, comics are enormously popular in Mexico. Having this situation in mind, Aquiles Negrete, a researcher at the Autonomous National University of Mexico, has been describing his exploration of the use of comics to communicate science issues at PCST.

An image from the comic, "Sustainable Love"

His Sustento de amor (sustainable love) comic is a love story that uses visuals and a skilled narrative to disseminate information about sustainable development and natural resources  in Mexico and Central America.

Negrete has also developed what he calls the ‘RIRC’ method to evaluate the project, which uses four memory tasks, and  explores different levels of understanding.

“Our results show that comics can be an interesting tool for communicating science,” he says.

Also from Mexico, Rolando Riley from the Autonomous University of Chiapas, is using visual information to get science news and ideas to Chiapas, a state in which access to scientific information is poor.

“About 35 per cent of the population do not speak Spanish, the official language,” he explains.

One of the pilot projects is on nutrition, with a view to targeting women, because they “actually decide what the family will eat”.  Two other pilot projects will start soon, focusing on technology applied to agriculture, and the use of natural resources.

This blog post is part of our Public Communication of Science & Technology (PCST2012) conference coverage.

Exploring science theatre

Luisa Massarani
Latin America regional coordinator, SciDev.Net

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Two ‘classics’ of science communication — Baudouin Jurdant from the University of Paris 7 (pictured on the left) and Steve Miller of University College London, taking part in an exploration of science theatre at PCST 2012.

The pair participated in a play reading that aimed to encourage reflections on the challenges for communicating science to the public using drama.

The reading was also participated in by Jöelle Le Marec of the Université Paris Diderot and Yves Jeanneret of Paris Sorbonne Université — both in France —  and Ana Godinho from the Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem in Portugal.

The play was written by Jourdant, who has no immediate plans to stage the play in a regular theatre.

This blog post is part of our Public Communication of Science & Technology (PCST2012) conference coverage.

Happy birthday, Public Understanding of Science!

Luisa Massarani
Latin America regional coordinator, SciDev.Net

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The commemoration of the 20^th anniversary of the journal of Public Understanding of Science (PUS) has recevied its own plenary session at PCST 2012, with the participation of all four editors: John Durant (MIT, US), Bruce Lewenstein (Cornell University, US), Edna Einsiedel (University of Calgary, Canada) and Martin Bauer (London School of Economics, UK).

Public Understanding of Science

It was a good opportunity for thinking about the past, the present and the future. The history of the journal coincides with an important moment of consolidation of the academic field.

One of the main journals for researchers in this discipline, it has doubled its publication rate since 1992, moving from 4 issues a year to 8. The editors say they want to broaden the journal’s current “North Atlantic driven” focus.

“We need to increase the presence of other countries and push the internationalisation of the authorship,” said Bauer, the journal’s president editor.

This blog post is part of our Public Communication of Science & Technology (PCST2012) conference coverage.

Science communication in the world

Luisa Massarani
Latin America regional coordinator, SciDev.Net

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In recent years, there is growing concern about the lack of science communication outside Europe and United States.

A 317 page book launched at PCST 2012 has the aim of engaging voices from other continents in communicating science.

Science Communication in the World – Practices, Theories and Trends explores the field of science communication over the past four decades in several countries.

It is edited by Canadian Bernard Schiele, Professor in the Communications Department at the University of Quebec at Montreal; French author Michel Claessens from the Communication Unit at the European Commission; and Shunke Shi, from the Chinese Research Institute for Science Popularization in Beijing.

According to the authors, while many countries have, at different times and to varying degrees, embarked on ambitious scientific, technical and cultural policies, the objectives they pursue must be understood and assessed within their specific national contexts.

The book, published by Springer, is comprised of 20 chapters written by authors all over the world. It is certainly worth a look. A pity that the price is so high, though – £117 ($US179).  But participants at PCST receive a 20 per cent discount.

This blog post is part of our Public Communication of Science & Technology (PCST2012) conference coverage.

Beauty has a specific space in our brain?

Luisa Massarani
Latin America regional coordinator, SciDev.Net

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Beautiful things have one thing in common: they activate a specific area of the brain. This intriguing idea was raised in the opening session of this year’s conference by Semir Zeki, professor at neurosthetics at University College London, United Kingdom, in a talk on the measurement of beauty.

It’s a controversial and possibly reductionist idea, but one thing we would probably agree on is that if there was a way of testing our brain activity during his talk, we would have been pretty active.

The PCST 2012 venue - Florence's Palazzo Vecchio

Certainly no one could disagree that the location of the 12^th International Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST 2012) is one of beauty. We are at the Palazzo Vecchio, surrounded by fantastic artworks, including a Michelangelo.

For Piero Angela, a senior Italian TV announcer who has been central to the primetime science show “Superquark“, emotion is the central issue in engaging the public in science.

“Without emotion, we are not able to switch on the brain, to activate the memories,” he told the opening session.

The conference has attracted 647 delegates from 46 countries. The majority are from Europe (72 per cent), followed by Asia (9 per cent), North America (9 per cent) and Oceania (5 per cent).  Just 4 per cent and 1 per cent of the delegates are from Latin America and Africa respectively.

We will have two very packed and exciting days!

Note from Editor: The organisers have uploaded podcasts from conference sessions here.

This blog post is part of our Public Communication of Science & Technology (PCST2012) conference coverage.

Luggage ready, destination Florence!

Luisa Massarani
Latin America regional coordinator, SciDev.Net

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I just finished packing my luggage. I am very excited about travelling to Florence, Italy. The city is fantastic, the wine and the food are both so good as to be indescribable.

Florence is hosting PCST2012

But it is unlikely that I can taste any of these delights, as I will be extremely busy.  Not that I am unhappy, though. The Public Communication of Science and Technology Conference (PCST) is one of my favourites.

There are other two other key international conferences on science communication: the World Conference for Science Journalists and  the World Conference for Science Centers. I really enjoy both of them, but PCST is about everything and everybody together: scientists, journalists, artists etc (and there are a lot of “etc”!).  It is about both research and practical initiatives. In summary: everything related to science communication.

And one of the most enjoyable aspects of these international conferences is that they are held in a different country each time.  It’s a great opportunity to observe how the concept of science communication can change according to a specific cultural, social and economic context.

I have high expectations for the meeting in Florence. The organisers are expecting around 850 people, and looking at the programme, it’s very exciting. There are some extremely well-known and well-respected speakers.

More from me very soon. In the meantime, check out the website, where you can find out more about the conference and read the full programme.

Note from Editor: This year the organisers will be recording sessions and making them available on the conference site as podcasts.

This blog post is part of our Public Communication of Science & Technology (PCST2012) conference coverage.