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Project description
Metatheoretical investigation of the criteria of adequacy of scientific communication to the general public
The project aims to answer the question of whether scientific communication to the general public is possible while redefining the concept of scientific literacy on epistemological grounds and shaping an interdisciplinary theoretical framework within which the research will provide the criteria of adequacy of this specific communication and the basic theoretical norms that should optimize this complex process.
The project starts with a theoretic-formal approach of the popularized scientific text in its mere linguistic-logic-epistemic form, independent from the level of education of the reader. The idea is to identify a certain "epistemic-readability" logic of such a text, which should make it intelligible and understandable (concepts to be defined adequately) under the constraints imposed by journalistic style. This approach toward adequacy is metatheoretical and involves, along with educational and cognitive sciences, philosophical disciplines such as logic, epistemology, and philosophy of science and of language, which, given the optimization goal, would become effectively applicative.
After acquiring the optimization model of a scientific text within the theoretic-formal stage, the project can be developed further toward the application and implementation of practical results into the activity of the entities providing non-classical forms of science education, namely science periodicals and 'e-learning' platforms.
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Research team
Dr. Catalin Barboianu (Philosophy of Science, Epistemology, Philosophy of Language, Logic), principal investigator
New openings will be announced with the development of the project.
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Associated program
The ScCom project has a theoretical part and an applicative "in field" part. We run a program in the latter part, by which we encourage the management of sites in various niches to adopt a specific kind of expert content coming from the academic zone, namely user-friendly summaries of journal articles with topics of interest for their audience. Such content offers us material for our evidence-based research and for theoretical investigations related to the ScCom project. We have launched the following call:
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HARO (Help a Reporter Out)-type call:
Experts, writers, and site managers able to summarize journal research articles on their sites (with topics related to their niche). The summaries will get cited.
We run a program related to a science-communication research project that encourages non-academic sites to adopt a specific form of science journalism for making research results available for the general audience (acronym ScCom at PhilScience). We collaborate with experts, writers, and site managers in various niches, who want to get involved and be cited as sources in our research reports and academic publications in our network.
We are looking to connect with expert writers in any niche with the ability to write and post on their sites (or sites for which they write) friendly-user summaries of journal articles cited in the academic publications in our network. Such summaries can be cited as sources for a better reading and understanding of the academic topics being cited. We give priority to niches related to academia (education, health care, lifestyle and wellbeing, technology, travel, writing, etc.), but any legal niche is welcome. After getting involved, we also expect you to share your particular experience in adopting this form of science journalism in your niche, which we could also cite in our research. We assist you in choosing from a list of articles a topic of interest for your audience and in writing the summary, if necessary. Once the summary is posted on your site, we can manage to cite it in publications where the associated journal article is cited, via the Citation-Based Academic Link Building (CBALB) and other programs.
Example: Katz, D. L., & Meller, S. (2014). Can we say what diet is best for health?. Annual Review of Public Health, 35(1), 83-103. Summary [anchor for the URL where the summary is posted].
The publication incorporating the citation of the summary can go live on several academic channels (science repositories, academic archives, science blogs, reserach-data repositories, and university scholarship resources).
If interested to join this project, send your request to
info[at]philscience.org (subject 'Summary for ScCom').
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