VoYS media guide
Standing up for Science
Standing up for Science is a lively, informal guide to the inner workings of the media with practical tips about how early career scientists can get involved.
The guide has been developed by a team of early career scientists who, after attending VoYS workshops, wanted to share insights into how to talk about their research and improve the science in public discussions.
The team, armed with a list of concerns from their peers and their own insights from the workshops, interviewed scientists, journalists and press officers across the country to find out what they thought early career scientists should know about the media and myths and fears about how they work.
The result is Standing up for Science, a guide to the media for early career scientists by early career scientists.
We’d like to thank our partners for their help and input into the guide.
How to navigate the web resource
During the development of Standing up for Science the VoYS writing team collected so much material that we couldn’t fit it into the 12-page booklet! The additional materials are available here:
- Interactive PDF of Standing up for Science By clicking on the links in the document you can access the full interviews and biographies for all the contributors as well as the VoYS writing team biographies and Partners’ details. Alternatively, you can follow the links below or the menu in the side menu bar:
- .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
The background story
Since 2004, VoYS media workshops have been responding to early career scientists’ concerns and fears about the media head on. These range from queries as to why not all science journalists have science backgrounds, to accusations of misrepresentation of science by the media. These workshops have been very successful; they are always oversubscribed with 100% attendance rates and consistently get over 85% of participants rating them either good or excellent on the feedback forms.
Many of our participants want to go on and spread the word about getting involved in public debates about science to their friends and colleagues. In response to this Sense About Science created the VoYS network, which operates to support early career scientists wanting to make their voices’ heard in public debates about science; and also Standing up for Science which can be distributed to early career scientists across the country and provides insight into how the media reports science and gives practical tips on how to get more involved in public debates about science.
To make sure Standing up for Science reflected the concerns of early career scientists, it was developed with the help of the VoYS writing team. The VoYS writing team members come from a range of different science disciplines, at different stages in their careers and are from across the country. They have been involved in everything to do with the development of the guide; from interviewing contributors to deciding on the design and layout to final proof reading.
Through our partners, on the eve of release, Sense About Science had already distributed over 8,500 copies of Standing up for Science to early career scientists across the country and is already getting orders for more from university departments wanting to distribute them to their postgraduate students. It is freely available on the internet as well as in hardcopy (within the UK), these can be ordered by contacting Alice Tuff at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or 0207 478 4380.
Last updated: August 30 2007
