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August 21st, 2015

Permission to tweet? The underlying principles of good science communication are all about sharing.

6 comments | 1 shares

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Blog Admin

August 21st, 2015

Permission to tweet? The underlying principles of good science communication are all about sharing.

6 comments | 1 shares

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

TAW2 reducedTerry Wheeler was at the 100th annual conference of the Ecological Society of America last week. Alongside community shifts towards openness, the rise of Twitter has led to a huge shift in the way science is shared. But with little explanation from the organisers, a confusing opt-in policy for live-tweeting was implemented. Social media is one of the most powerful tools scientists have to explain what we do and why it matters. We should be doing more, not less, to make sure the great science gets out.

Much has changed in the 30 years since I went to my first science conference. Although there’s still a big component of “scientists in dimly-lit rooms talking at other scientists” at many traditional scientific conferences, the walls are coming down (or at least getting transparent) in some ways, and that’s a really good thing. As I spend more time engaging with other scientists and non-scientists through various and assorted forms of social media, I can’t help noticing changes in the way we communicate science and share science. And conferences are a really interesting place to see those changes happening, especially within the scientific community.

I think there’s more value placed on story than there used to be. Great presenters don’t just dispense the data and results and implications of their research; they invite the audience into the research, weaving a story of why they asked that question, and what it all means. The best science ventures into art and literature and more, and comes out stronger. And that’s a great thing. Just because your DNA lab has to be sterile, that doesn’t mean your talk has to be. The talks and posters I remember most are usually those done by a student or post-doc who instantly helps me feel a connection to a study system or question or place I know nothing about. That’s scientific communication!

My own interests are strongly rooted in natural history, so I’ve been really delighted to see the prominence of natural history at ESA in recent years. One of the benefits of that for communication is that natural history presents such a strong opportunity to connect institutional research with public interest in nature; to connect professionals with amateurs; and to connect science with art. Strengthening these connections across traditionally separate domains is a great way to increase the understanding and appreciation of science outside the walls of ScienceWorld. It was fantastic to see people stopping by booths in the big exhibit hall to sketch specimens at the Natural History Section booth, or sketch their research at the Science Communications Section booth.

Another change that’s increasingly obvious wandering through the exhibit hall is the way we publish and share science. A mainstay of conference exhibit halls are the displays from publishers, both the big publishing houses and university presses. As a book junkie, I love it. But in among the usual Wiley and Springer and Cornell University Press booths, other pathways to publishing and sharing science are gaining ground too. Big data repositories make data shareable, verifiable and accessible; open access journals make the results of our science accessible to people; and changes in the way peer review works may just streamline one of the most annoying and capricious parts of the publishing process.

Although there were a few thousand ecologists at the conference, far more people interested in the field and the presentations weren’t. But that’s becoming less of a divide too. Speakers are increasingly posting their posters, slides, code, or data on figshare,github, or other websites. You no longer have to be IN the room to see them. The rise of Twitter has led a huge shift in the way science is shared beyond the meeting room too. The ESA meeting in 2014 was my first conference after joining Twitter and I posted some thoughts after that meeting about the positive side of Twitter at meetings. So I arrived at ESA 2015 ready to connect or reconnect with some Twitter people, and share my 140-character perspectives on the meeting (at least the parts I saw) with people beyond the room.

Then things got a bit peculiar.

ESA has a Code of Conduct for conferences. This is important and I wish every conference did this. The Code of Conduct, with some additional conference-specific pieces, was printed in the conference program. Two pieces were related, directly or indirectly, to live-tweeting presentations: don’t photograph slides or posters without author’s permission; and “we ask that attendees posting to social media avoid posting detailed information from presentations”. Both these seem reasonable, and are in line with last year’s policy. Most people would, I think, interpret that to mean: tweet about the speaker’s topic, general question, coolness of study, etc. but not actual data. And ask before you take pictures. And that’s what most conference live tweets do anyway.

tweetsImage credit: Modification of ClkerFreeVectorImages (Public Domain)

But then on the eve of the meeting, when many people had already arrived in Baltimore, ESA reminded attendees, via Twitter, that any live-tweeting without the prior permission of the author was prohibited. That’s pretty different from the printed policy, and that caused a whole lot of confusion. Essentially, it put the onus on presenters (many of whom aren’t active on Twitter and thus would be unaware of this) to opt in to people in the audience live-tweeting their work, instead of the much more usual, and logical, opportunity for presenters to opt out of people live tweeting sensitive or eminently scoopable results (and that is a whole other discussion for other blogs and other posts).

So, basically, by tweeting out (repeatedly) this new restriction on live-tweeting presentations early in the meeting, ESA was taking a step backward from their fairly open social media policy from previous years. Confusion ensued. Those of us used to live-tweeting talks were not sure what we should be doing (follow the printed program? do what we’ve always done? obey the new revised/restrictive tweet rules?). Ecologists who weren’t at the meeting were wondering why the usual stream of live tweets of presentations wasn’t coming as fast and furious as in past years; and there was little explanation or justification from ESA about why the opt-out policy had been replaced by an opt-in policy.

That’s a problem.

That’s a problem because the branch of science, and one of the biggest conferences in the field, that deals with some of the most pressing problems we face—climate change, conservation, urbanization, food security, sustainability, water quality, and more—should be making our research and its implications more accessible, not less accessible. The underlying principles of open science, and of good science communication are all about sharing. And as communities of scientists, we should be doing more, not less, to make sure the great science gets out. As double-edged a sword as social media can be, it’s one of the most powerful tools we, as scientists, have to explain to the big wide world what we do and why it matters.

I hope that, when we all turn up at ESA 2016 to share our excitement about what we’ve been doing for the past year, there’ll be a clear and open policy in place that recognizes the enormous overall benefit of open science, open communication, and the value of sharing.

Because sharing isn’t just nice; it’s absolutely critical.

This piece originally appeared on the author’s personal blog as Fading walls: Communication, conferences, and sharing science and is reposted with the author’s permission.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Impact of Social Science blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review our Comments Policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.

About the Author

Terry Wheeler is an Associate Professor in Natural Resource Sciences at McGill University in Montreal. His research focuses on the taxonomy and ecology of insects, especially in the arctic. He is also particularly interested in the role of natural history as a foundation for teaching and research in biodiversity. He is a relative latecomer to the use of social media for science communication, but is glad to have arrived. He can be found on Twitter @ta_wheeler.

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