How Do I Reach These Kids? A Thought on Scholarly Communication
No rational individual would deny the benefits that scientific progress has provided our society with. Every major technological innovation of the last century came as a result of collaboration. Often, we as a culture tend to view science, and especially scientific research as simply “for the scientists”. We often forget the benefits of participating within the scientific process to discover new and great ideas. One of the central forces perpetuating this disconnect is the current dynamic of scholarly communication.
Go on to ProQuest, JSTOR, or any other database of scholarly research. At the end of every reputable article there is always a massive list of references to other research. These references provide the article with depth, background and a facet for new ideas to emerge. However, if you’re not a researcher, or a student whose school has a subscription to the databases, you may be pretty screwed if you want to access this information. As a result, some individuals who are passionate enough about a subject to conduct research on it are left out of the conversation. This, in turn, hurts our ability to collectively innovate.
The solution? Make research more available to the people. I’m not talking about pulling an Aaron Swartz and downloading terabytes worth of articles to publish online, rather, changing the dynamic in how people interact with research. A significant portion of the United States is unable to appreciate scholarly research, whether that be due to the complexity of the language utilized or the inability to access these databases. This is why researches must focus on outlets to share this knowledge in a manner that’s accessible to all. I believe that the best way to accomplish this is through television and visualization. Ted Talks, and shows such as Cosmos with Neil DeGrasse Tyson are perfect examples of this. In both cases, researchers that have devoted their entire lives to the study one subject, Astrophysics for example, are able to encapsulate their passion for the subject in short clips which can spark passion inside the average person watching it. If we as a society want to perform at maximum efficiency, we must also be able to ensure that every individual has the means to find out what they are passionate about. By utilizing these outlets like television, every person who wants to learn is able to in an accessible manner, and I think this dynamic is really powerful. Science is cool, it’s not just for scientists, it’s for us all. We have to utilize these incredible capabilities that we have developed (through science, mind you) to include everybody in the scholarly conversation who wants to be included.
