Altmetrics, ‘Altmetric,’ and Science Communication

Photo credit: Todd Eddy. Shared under a Creative Commons license. Click for more info.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Iara Vidal, a Ph.D. student based in Brazil whose work focuses on altmetrics and scholarly communication. If you’re curious about altmetrics, or how they may be relevant to science communication, read on.

Being overwhelmed by information is not a new phenomenon, but it is a very real problem. We struggle to keep up to date with all the discoveries, papers, and books in our fields of interest. It often seems as though new fields of study, methods, and/or tools are created every month. Buzzwords are all around, and it can be hard to know if there’s anything useful behind the buzz.

One of these buzzwords is altmetrics.

If You Love Democracy, Buy a Newspaper

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A photograph taken at a Trump rally has been making the rounds on social media recently. It shows a man wearing a t-shirt that reads: “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required.” It is a direct reference to lynching, and it should piss you off.

A Voice with an Audience: an Interview with Hope Jahren

 

Photo credit: Kevin Doncaster. Shared under a Creative Commons license. Click for more information.

Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren, is one of the best books I’ve read in recent years. It’s a book about science. And about plants. And about people. As I wrote in a review earlier this year, Jahren manages to find a balance between entertaining popular science and compelling memoir. That’s a tough combination to pull off, and a hell of a read.

And I was far from the only one who enjoyed Lab Girl – it’s garnered positive attention in outlets from the New York Times to PBS to The Guardian.

Recently Jahren – who has relocated her geobiology lab from Hawaii to the University of Oslo – let me pick her brain about writing, blogging and how she balances her writing with her work as a scientist.

EurekAlert! Security Breach (with Updates)

I thought many in the science communication community would want to know about a security breach at EurekAlert!, and what that means for the service. I’m running the update from AAAS in its entirety below (retrieved from this page), and will run any updates as I receive them. [Multiple updates added. See below.]

Some Questions and Thoughts on the NASW Officer Debate

Hey there, folks. This is some inside-baseball ruminating about the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), so feel free to skip this one if that’s not up your alley.

Find the Stories: an Interview with Ed Yong

Detail of book covers. Image courtesy of Ed Yong.

Ecosystems are complicated. They involve myriad organisms existing and interacting within a particular place at a particular time. These are dynamic habitats, with populations that are constantly shifting.

We Are Here; Make Room: An Interview with Stephani Page

The science, technology, engineering and math fields have a diversity problem: women and people of color are significantly underrepresented.

And while large institutions – from federal agencies to universities – are trying to address STEM diversity, a lot of the work is being done at the grassroots level.

One of those grassroots efforts was launched by Stephani Page, who spearheaded the creation of the #BlackAndSTEM online community in early 2014. Page, now a postdoctoral researcher at UNC-Chapel Hill, has a varied research background: a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and master’s in biology from North Carolina A&T, and a PhD in biochemistry and biophysics from UNC.

I wanted to talk with her about the creation and evolution of #BlackAndSTEM, and how science communication can make a difference in STEM diversity.

Science Communication Breakdown: Your background is as a scientist, rather than a communicator. When did you start thinking seriously about science communication?

Goodbye, Old Blog – Hello, New Blog

Waving goodbye. Waving hello. Photo credit: Andrew Kruse. Shared under a Creative Commons license. Click for more information.

The original version of this blog was launched on a blog network called SciLogs, which announced earlier this month that it will be shutting down in September. This marks the end of Communication Breakdown, but the beginning of my new blog, Science Communication Breakdown – the blog that you are, in fact, reading right now.

Taking Science Experiments (and Kids) Outdoors: an Interview with Liz Heinecke

Summer is here, and for parents (like me) who have school-age children, that means finding ways to keep the kids occupied. And if those activities help to instill a love of science, all the better. So, what better time for finding a book of outdoor science experiments for children?

Well, folks, you’re in luck.