Archives des auteurs : Hans Dillaerts

Coming of age in the academy? The status of our emerging field

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Science communication is certainly growing as an academic field, as well as a professional specialization. This calls to mind predictions made decades ago about the ways in which the explosion of scientific knowledge was envisioned as the likely source of new difficulties in the relationship between science and society.

It is largely this challenge that has inspired the creation of the field of science communication. Has science communication become its own academic subdiscipline in the process? What exactly does this entail?

URL : http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/09/03/Jcom0903%282010%29C01/Jcom0903%282010%29C06/Jcom0903%282010%29C06.pdf

From analogue to digital scholarship: implications for science communication researchers

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Digital media have transformed the social practices of science communication. They have extended the number of channels that scientists, media professionals, other stakeholders and citizens use to communicate scientific information.

Social media provide opportunities to communicate in more immediate and informal ways, while digital technologies have the potential to make the various processes of research more visible in the public sphere.

Some digital media also offer, on occasion, opportunities for interaction and engagement. Similarly, ideas about public engagement are shifting and extending social practices, partially influencing governance strategies, and science communication policies and practices.

In this paper I explore this developing context via a personal journey from an analogue to a digital scholar. In so doing, I discuss some of the demands that a globalised digital landscape introduces for science communication researchers and document some of the skills and competencies required to be a digital scholar of science communication.

URL : http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/09/03/Jcom0903%282010%29C01/Jcom0903%282010%29C05/Jcom0903%282010%29C05.pdf

Is science communication its own field? …

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Is science communication its own field? :

The present comment examines to what extent science communication has attained the status of an academic discipline and a distinct research field, as opposed to the common view that science communication is merely a sub-discipline of media studies, sociology of science or history of science. Against this background, the authors of this comment chart the progress science
communication has made as an emerging subject over the last 50 years in terms of a number of
measures. Although discussions are still ongoing about the elements that must be present to
constitute a legitimate disciplinary field, we show here that science communication meets four key
elements that constitute an analytical framework to classify academic disciplines: the presence of
a community; a history of inquiry; a mode of inquiry that defines how data is collected; and the
existence of a communications network.”

URL : http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/09/03/Jcom0903%282010%29C01/Jcom0903%282010%29C04/Jcom0903%282010%29C04.pdf

Science communication, an emerging discipline

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Several publications have sought to define the field of science communication and review current issues and recent research. But the status of science communication is uncertain in disciplinary terms.

This commentary considers two dimensions of the status of discipline as they apply to science communication – the clarity with which the field is defined and the level of development of theories to guide formal studies.

It argues that further theoretical development is needed to support science communication’s full emergence as a discipline.

URL : http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/09/03/Jcom0903%282010%29C01/Jcom0903%282010%29C03/Jcom0903%282010%29C03.pdf

Global trends in research resources and …

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Global trends in research resources and scientific output in microbiology in Spain (1998-2007) :

“This work assesses the main features of microbiological research developed in Spain over the last decade (1998–2007), observing its changes and trends along the time and comparing them to those which have taken place in other life sciences. This analysis encompasses the entire scientific cycle: the organizations involved (basically, universities, research centers, scientific societies, and companies), resources invested (human and economic), and outputs or results obtained (journals, articles, doctoral theses, and other documents or publications). Summarizing, there is a positive trend in Spanish microbiology regarding research projects and scientific articles; the scientific output (research articles) of Spanish microbiologists ranks 6th in the world, which is higher than the ranking of Spain with respect to economic development.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/19054/

Almost Halfway There: an Analysis of the…

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Almost Halfway There: an Analysis of the Open Access Behaviors of Academic Librarians :

“Academic librarians are increasingly expected to advocate for scholarly communications reforms such as open access to scholarly publications, yet librarians do not always practice what they preach. Previous research examined librarian attitudes toward open access, whereas this article presents results of a study of open access publishing and self-archiving behaviors of academic librarians. Following an analysis of open access to library and information science literature in
2008, several strategies to encourage academic librarians to continue embrace open access
behaviors are discussed.”

URL : http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/2010/09/14/crl-167.full.pdf