In this latest blog, Helen Duriez, from our Professional Development Committee, reflects on how our current webinar series Trust, Truth and Scholarly Publishing webinar series came together.
Oh, how the world turns. I used to think that Donald Trump
running for US president was a fine joke. I used to think there was no way the
UK would choose to go it alone when it could be a part of the collective
economic might of the European Union. Turns out, the voting public in the US
and UK had very different ideas to those of this naïve millennial back in 2016.
Two years on, it’s become apparent that a large part of the
success of these two major political campaigns was their ability to leverage
personal belief systems. People are more likely to believe what they read if it
aligns with their pre-existing belief system or if it taps into a feeling of
existential threat, causing them to disregard evidence to the contrary.
Ironically enough, there’s research that backs up this theory, and the concept even has a name – post-truth. You
might have heard of it.
Now, what people choose to believe (or not) is tightly interwoven
with what we choose to tell them, and how. In scholarly publishing, most of our
jobs involve disseminating complex information in one form or another. With
research output higher than ever before, there’s a lot of complicated stuff
to explain – not just to academics and practitioners, but to the general public
as well. Scientists are used to working with ambiguities, although that doesn’t
mean they always navigate the rocky terrain of uncertainty safely. And what
about lay audiences, who give as much weight to opinions as to facts?
The team at ALPSP felt this topic warranted further exploration, and so a small group of staff and volunteers (I’m one of the latter) have taken it upon ourselves to put together a series of webinars looking at some of the issues and opportunities in scholarly publishing today. Here’s how the series pans out…
Publishing without perishing
In case you missed the first webinar in the Trust, Truth
& Scholarly Publishing series, go – sign up
and download it. Seriously, do it. Yes, as one of the organisers I may be a
little biased, but even knowing what I was about to listen to didn’t stop me
from being motivated and left feeling a little awe-inspired as Richard Horton
gave us a passionate, powerful reminder of what early journal publishers set
out to achieve, and the obligations we still have to society today. Jason Hoyt
follows up with some practical thoughts about how publishers can succeed in a
post-truth world.
The reproducibility opportunity
In last week's webinar, now available for download too, and highly recommended, Catriona Fennell, Rachel Tsui and Chris
Chambers explored how the concept of reproducible science represents
an opportunity, rather than a threat, when it comes to getting to the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The traditional journal publishing
model doesn’t have much time for replication studies (not original research,
don’t ya know) or registered reports (findings, please!), but things are
starting to change…
Public engagement with scholarly research
The process of communicating a new piece of scientific research to
the world can sometimes feel a little like a game of Chinese
whispers. When the description of a complex concept or process is
shortened and reworded in order to reach a new audience, it’s meaning can
change subtly. I’ve seen more than one twitter spat debating the latest “scientists
have found…” health fact, and there are those who have built
careers around addressing some of these misrepresentations.
So, what tools can those of us in scholarly communication use to
instil trust in our content? In our last webinar we are joined by three industry communicators Tom Griffin, John Eggleton and Eva Emerson to find out. You can register here for this final webinar.
For more practical information on the series, including how
to get a members’ discount, see
here.
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