How to get people interested in reading science is a non-trivial issue and my recent thinking is to give them a different way to connect with the science. In general, the goal is to get people in touch with research done around them or about them. Therefore, I have the following programs in mind: Science About Your State (SAYS) and Science Produced by Your State (SPYS)
SAYS (Science about your state): let’s readers understand what scientists are interested in studying about their state. Such as obesity studies, deforestation, pollution etc.
SPYS (Science Produced by Your State): let’s people connect with their local research community. What do they do at the University where my kids go, or that is just down the street etc?
This program would interface with already popular sites that provide people with regional specific information. For instance it could be an application that teams-up with Yahoo! or Google or even The Weather Channel – any site that let’s you select information about a particular zip-code/region.
For instance, on my Yahoo! account I can read local news because I have entered a zip code that I am interested in hearing specifically about. Then a tab is created that carries headlines of news about my local area. So for the SAYS or SPYS I could be directed to a page that lists relevant press released articles and it could also include open access journal articles as well as titles from the journals that don’t have open access for the articles. All of this may help people make a bit better connection to Science. Because in order to get people to care we may have to take a play out of the politicians playbook and realize that all science is local.
Cheers
That sounds like an interesting idea. I suspect someone more computer-savvy would be able to cobble together some code to do it. Hmmm. If you trawl through the Firefox add-ons, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s already something similar. It sounds like the sort of thing someone would do.
Bob – I will trawl when I can and let you know if i find anything. Thanks for the idea.
That sounds like a great idea. Very similar to what Steven Johnson is working on with his hyperlocal site outside.in.
Thanks Eric. I will look into contacting some of these groups to see if they can help/are interested in something like this.
Bob (and those who are interested)- Based on your suggestion I was looking through some of the Firefox add-ons and found one that looks like it may gain some utility as it is developed – it is called i-cite. Guess I will have to stop using Chrome and go back to the Fox. Thanks again for the tip.
Good idea Craig! Sounds like this could either be relatively low-maintenance (just some sort of aggregator) or higher maintenance (e.g. special features of current science ongoings in the state).