How to fix a weak link?

At the end of November 2013, the Gazeta.Ru portal signed a cooperation agreement with the organizers of the Science Festival. The main goal of a joint project is to popularize the scientific achievements of employees of Moscow State University. We are talking with the editor of the department of science " Gazeta.Ru " Nikolai Disgoringyuk . Questions were asked by Sergey Popov .

- Why did you decide to start working together with Moscow State University to implement the project? Do you plan to develop it further?

- I would still clarify that this is cooperation with the “festival of science”, and not with Moscow State University. So, in the framework of our project, we talked about the work of Artyom Oganov, published in December in the journal of Science , one of the most famous Russian scientists. He is a graduate of Moscow University, but from Russian affiliations in this work he only had the MITI, where he creates a laboratory for a megagran.

This cooperation is a pilot project. The prerequisites for this project are laid down by a special plot, which is then the department of the science of our portal, which then consists of two people - me and Alexandra Borisova (now she heads the news department of Gazeta.ru) - created in January 2010, earlier it was called “Russia writes”, now “open from Russia” [1]. For this plot, we prepared notes on scientific articles in leading scientific journals (primarily Nature , Science and PNAS ), where among the authors there were scientists with Russian affiliation. The notes on these studies were read on average 7-10 thousand people, and some more than 30 thousand.

Another prerequisite is that for several years, a pool of qualified authors has been formed at the Gazeta.RU science department, they are both recognized scientific journalists and students who have undergone practice. As a result, the “bright future” consists in the implementation of the following scheme: we quickly (both scientists themselves and from publishers, or somehow) learn about the fresh scientific work of Russian researchers and quickly (for one or three days) we prepare a press release in two languages: Russian and English. We give the Russian press release to the scientific organization where the Russian author works, English to international press releases Eurekalent and Alphagalileo press releases. Plus, Russian press releases is the basis for our future news notes.

Returning to the first part of the issue - of course, our pilot project from scientific organizations is associated primarily with Moscow State University with the “festival of science”. One of the reasons for this is the fact that the university along with the Ministry of Education and Science is the organizer of the Festival of Science. Another reason is that most of the employees of our department of science are graduates of the university (such as, for example, a key employee in the department of the “festival of science”, candidate of historical sciences Ilya Usov, he led students in our department for two years in a row and raised a number of excellent personnel for Gazeta.ru) or even scientists of the university (for example, your humble servant). This largely facilitates the interaction with scientists: there are developed contacts and communications.

- What is the role of a company engaged in the "festival of science" in a joint project? What help will other university structures provide?

- So far, the role of purely organizational. Of course, this project, even in a pilot form, requires additional resources. Now we are helped by the United Company "Poster - Rambler - SUP", which includes "newspapers". But even Organ support is already a lot. We have not really communicated with the leaders of other university structures yet: due to the accumulated ties, we immediately managed to go directly to actively working scientists with fresh publications in scientific journals.

-It would seem that the press service is usually engaged in such work all over the world. It turns out that in this case, Gazeta.Ru plays the role of an external press service. In your opinion, is this a long -lived model, or sooner or later will we come to global practice? Why hasn’t the institute of the press service yet?

-In order for scientists to know in society, the following chain should act: the scientist-the institute (press service)-the media (scientific journalists)-society. The weakest link here is the institute. The heads of scientific organizations do not really know about the achievements of their employees. In those scientific organizations where there are press services, these press services often also do not know what scientists are doing, and consider it their duty to describe the meetings of managers at the highest level and put on the news other officialdom. But the “scientific journalists” link in our country is now very active and quite united, which showed different unpleasant stories like obscurantism with Petrica or the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences. I would like to note in this a large role of the newspaper “Trinity Option - Science” and a club of scientific journalists (I will especially note the role of Alexander Sergeyev).

I do not know the truth in the last instance-how the press secretaries should work in scientific organizations. There are many options. I am one hundred percent sure that they should not work as the RAS press service is now working. I am sure that we must focus on the examples that I saw abroad - in the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO). In our department of science, the “critical mass” has risen: we felt that we can do more, and this is a job, from which everyone - scientists, institutions, ordinary readers - will only be beneficial. I can even make a loud statement that this work is a matter of public importance.

As a result, it does not matter who will talk about the scientific achievements of a particular organization-the press service, “newspapers” or some abstract competent scientific PR agency. The main thing is to do it. The Russian audience has interest in science, and not only in pop tops from the field “British scientists ...”, but also to serious scientific research. For example, it was very pleasant for me to see how, in the comments on the note about dark matter, two physicists at a very serious scientific level discussed alternative theories, exchanged references to articles and unless the formulas did not write.

- How do you plan to select the topics of the news, how will you discover them before publication? What will be the main criterion? In particular, how will you work with articles of large collaborations, if Moscow State University employees are not on the first roles, as well as with articles whose authors, in fact, are employees of Moscow State University only formally?

- I'll start with a slightly provocative statement. I believe that any scientific article is worthy of a popular science note. Yes, everything is far from always obvious there. Yes, there are articles with theoretical calculations in a hundred pages. But you can always find an entry that will be interesting to the reader. To do this, you only need to spend time for the person who is trying to write a popular material. Sometimes it takes an hour. And sometimes there are few two weeks.

We try to determine the publications before their release by interviewing the leading highly focused scientists working at Moscow State University. Here I would like to thank the project “Expert Corps”, which we actively used in our work. But since the project is pilot, until we saw a big problem in talking about a scientific article that has recently been released, up to a month or even a little more.

We do not see any problems to talk about articles where university employees are not on the first roles. I constantly observe how several releases appear on one article at once - from each of the organizations in which the authors of the article work. The main thing is to describe the contribution of the Russian author and give information about who is the leading author of the publication and in which institution, in which country he works. With articles of large collaborations, it is more difficult, although here I do not see a problem to focus on what is made by Russian scientists. And about those who are only formally listed. Frankly, and here I do not see difficulties. Well, let a person mainly work abroad, but if he indicates the affiliation of the institution, then he associates himself with him. And the institution should appreciate it. For example, I believe that the leadership of Moscow State University should maintain contact with Artyom Oganov so that he would not have to sacrifice the university affiliation in publication in Science .

-How often do you plan to release press releases, news, articles? How does this correlate with the overall statistics of scientific publications of Moscow State University?

- According to the Truth base [2], Moscow State University in 2012 published about a thousand articles in prestigious foreign scientific journals. As part of our pilot project, which began on December 2, we released six notes/press releases and ten news with a total readability of about 40 thousand. I hope that in January-February we will have all the possibilities to increase these indicators.

- How important is the English -speaking part of the project? How do you plan to promote press releases in English?

“The leading domestic astrophysicist Rashid Aliyevich Syunyaev in an interview told me the following phrase:“ The world of scientists speaks broken English. ” The English -language part of our project is important to do as much as it is important for the scientist in the modern world to know English and publish in foreign magazines. Although I can’t help but note that I personally realized the importance of publications in English, only when I started working in the department of science of Gazeta.ru. But this is a topic for a separate conversation.

We plan to promote our press releases nearby. So, we started an English -speaking blog in LiveJournal: Lomonossov.livejumal.com and Twitter - Lomonossovsp. In addition, we are now registering in international press releases systems. The first press release that we managed to publish in the Eurekalent system was dedicated to the article of university biologists Sergei Nedospasov and Andrei Kruglov in the Science magazine, they managed to make a revolutionary discovery: the role of a small molecule in the regulation of intestinal immunity, which contradicts the schemes accepted today [3]. Apparently, looking at the presence of a press release from Moscow University, the Institute of virology from the Helmholtz Munich Center, from where the article had one co-author, made his release and laid it out a couple of days after the Russian one.

Another way to promote our materials in English is a partnership with English -speaking sites writing about science. With many of them we are now negotiating. The site http://phys.org/ has already published two of our material, with it we agreed on cooperation.

-How will the scientists themselves be involved in the process of creating a press release, news notes or a popular science article?

- To begin with, we ask scientists to send us the article itself and briefly formulate the main conclusion of their work, their contribution to research and further prospects. Further, we study the original publication and call up, meet the scientists for a more objective conversation. After that, we prepare a draft press release and show it to a scientist. After their amendments or approval, we launch the process of translation into English and we also check this version with scientists. So everything happens with their active participation.

- In your opinion, can a positive feedback be expected with such popularization? Will scientists feel that popularization is beneficial for their research?

- I will give one of the examples of positive feedback, which can be applied precisely to Moscow State University. The debugged system, which includes widely distributed press releases in English, will allow the international community to more quickly and deeply get acquainted with the work performed at the university. This, in turn, will lead to an increase in the citation of such work and will generally increase the prestige of the university in the world. As a result, this cannot but affect positions in international university ratings.

What is the interest for the scientist himself to talk about his achievements? Firstly, it is interesting to a wide circle of readers. I can judge this by the attendance of the science and health of our portal, to which at least 1 million users per month come. The story about scientific research is in demand at least, and sometimes more than a review of a new film, a note about some maniac or reporting from the State Duma. Secondly, we can recall the well-known thesis that the scientist is engaged in research on the money of taxpayers and therefore is obliged to talk about his work of the public.

Thirdly, if a scientist who has real achievements will talk about them more often, this can expand the circle of his acquaintances, communication or audience. And among them, for example, there may be an oligarch that is imbued with the importance of these studies and will either contribute to them financially, or take a prize to support young scientists, or will do something else useful to science. Finally, if RAS actually talked about her scientific achievements - but she had, is and will be! - That maybe the reform of the Academy would not have passed in such a form stiffly imposed on top. We presented this thesis in detail at the conference of researchers in the Russian Academy of Sciences [4,5].

As for our project with the “Festival of Science”, I would say that positive began with the very first days of his work. Of those scientists (and this is more than a hundred), to whom we addressed within the framework of this project, only three people did not answer us. Most of the scientists replied that this was a very positive initiative, and how good that someone did this. So the “critical mass” for the conclusion of the popularization of science to a new level in Russia has gained. And, I am sure that a year later the situation will change sharply for the better.