Spreading the word on public engagement
A group of researchers at St Andrews recently published an assessment of their public engagement activities in the open access journal PLoS ONE. One of the authors, Mark Bowler stated:
It’s great to have it in a high impact open-access journal so that zoos can access it freely as well as universities.
Not only have they made sure that the results of their research can be accessed by anyone, the authors have promoted their work in a guest blog post for the Wellcome Trust: The Science of Public Engagement. The blog highlights the point that ‘while assessment of engagement is increasingly a requirement for some funders, it is still far from the norm’. It also describes the continuing importance to researchers of having their research peer reviewed and published on a recognised platform.
See the article on the University of St Andrews Research portal and of course in our repository Research@StAndrews:FullText
Bowler, M., Buchanan-Smith, H., & Whiten, A. (2012). Assessing Public Engagement with Science in a University Primate Research Centre in a National Zoo PLoS ONE, 7(4) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0034505
(This research was supported by a Wellcome Trust People Award to Prof Andy Whiten.)