Societal challenges like migration movements, climate change, or digitization show that there is a pressing need for informed expertise from virtually all fields of research. Yet, scientific knowledge often remains within its domain and reaches civil society only indirectly and delayed. In a 5-year citation window, 27% of the papers from natural sciences and 32% of the papers from social sciences remain uncited.
Expressed pointedly: While the need for scientific expertise is perhaps greater than ever, scientists produce papers that nobody reads. Moreover, neologisms like “alternative facts” suggest a noticeable loss of the scientific authority in the public opinion. All this raises a difficult question: What is the impact of science? In the next couple of weeks we will address this issue in more detail.
The Wikipedia community has become a source of information for a broad and global public. Paul and Max argue that contributing to the encyclopedia as a scholar can be a powerful way of achieving a strong societal impact of their own expertise. Furthermore they provide a guide on how to write your first contributions.
Jayat Joshi on the role of science as a guiding principle of political and societal action in extraordinary situations like the COVID-19 pandemic
Mike Schäfer & Jing Zeng on the particularities of conspiracy theories on COVID-19, how to face them, and what role science communicators play while doing so.
Stefanie Molthagen-Schnöring on science communication in times of a global pandemic and why communication with “the public” shouldn ´ t be its goal
Glaucia Souza on the introduction of BioFuels in Sao Paulo and all over Brazil, her activities at BIOEN and the transfer of technologies for more sustainable forms of mobility into practice.
As serious as the COVID-19 pandemic is, it could be an opportunity for science, says our editor Benedikt Fecher.
René von Schomberg on Responsible Innovation and its dimension of societal impact.
Prof. Lupia on the value of social science, its responsibilities, potentials and application.
Adrián A. Díaz-Faes analyses four dimensions of twitter metrics around science in a quantitative study.
Fecher and Kobsda introduce the Research Impact Canvas – a structured guide to plan science communication activities.
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