Public Understanding of Science – a peer-review journal for turbulent times

Abstract

Scientific publications began as the exchange of polite letters among Gentlemen of Leisure interested in natural philosophy, during the period of the European Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. The 19th century saw the proliferation of national academies of sciences and societies for the advancement of science to the wider public. The formation of scientific disciplines was to follow, each with its own reviews for reporting new theories, observations and experiments to peers, and for critiquing the work of others in public debate. In the 21st century, this enterprise of scientific publication has grown to gigantic proportions -narrowly defined as "producing peer-review journal articles." Databases of scientific publications (Scopus, ISI, Eigen-factor) track something in the area of 12,000 scientific journals (for example Web of Science, 2009: 11,261 journals, of which about 1/5 are social science), and something in the area of 700,000 published papers per year (2009). Such estimates differ widely and depend on the database. Björk et al. (2009) put this figure at 1.35 million for 2006, and Scopus (at www.SCimago.com) puts this figure at over 30 million citable documents for 2010. However we count, the bulk of this production is still located in the USA and in Europe, but Asia and Latin America are catching up fast. And all this remains a conservative measure of the real scientific effort. Most tracking exercises have a bias towards English language, the lingua franca of modern science, leaving many linguistically conscious researchers with a tough dilemma between pride in the mother tongue or an international impact. Moreover, even within the English language context, databases are incomplete, and some journals exist "off map."With a total of 465 papers peer-reviewed and published between January 1992 and December 2010, Public Understanding of Science is clearly a small fish in this large publishing ocean, and also a small fish within its own world, the social sciences. All the same, PUS strives vigorously to support the work of researchers studying the modern scientific mentality in a global perspective. PUS works for its authors: the impact story so farCitations impact has become the currency by which to identify and trade information about academic journals, and academic researchers increasingly depend on it for their careers. But impact ratings come in many different forms and format. It is necessary to establish some perspective on the matter.

Science communication as a field of research: identifying trends, challenges and gaps by analysing research papers

“…From a historical point of view, several trends and observations have been described over the last few decades: First of all, the productivity of scholars in the field of science communication has increased significantly [e.g. Bauer and Howard, 2013;Borchelt, 2012]. The analysis by Trench and Bucchi [2015] of the geographic locations of the research contributions included in their anthology [Bucchi and Trench, 2014] reveal a positive trend in terms of both cross-institutional and cross-country collaborations -i.e.…”

“…Irrespective of these trends, many scholars agree that scholars from Western, English-speaking countries continue to dominate the field [e.g. Bauer and Howard, 2013;Borchelt, 2012]. However, the bibliographic characteristics of science communication research outputs have rarely been analysed in a systematic way, despite the view that such overviews of research fields are important in identifying trends and challenges [Schäfer, 2012], or for defining a discipline [Gascoigne et al, 2010].…”

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Deficit Model, the Diffusion Model and Publics in STS

“…Journals such as Social Studies of Science and Science, Technology, & Human Values have published a number of articles on science and publics in recent years. Moreover, the quantitative and survey-based research that predominated in early issues of Public Understanding of Science have given way to more methodologically varied and theoretically diverse contributions (Bauer and Howard, 2012). 8 The rousing sense of mission associated with that journal has waned somewhat and recent editorials have Between a Rock and a Hard Place 603 been rather less strident than those which featured in early issues (Bauer and Howard, 2012).…”

“…Moreover, the quantitative and survey-based research that predominated in early issues of Public Understanding of Science have given way to more methodologically varied and theoretically diverse contributions (Bauer and Howard, 2012). 8 The rousing sense of mission associated with that journal has waned somewhat and recent editorials have Between a Rock and a Hard Place 603 been rather less strident than those which featured in early issues (Bauer and Howard, 2012). Meanwhile, influential studies have shown that science is being made in a variety of sites and by a diverse range of actors.…”

Computer-aided text analysis: an open-aired laboratory for social sciences

“…Our own area of PCST studies was also studied reflexively with similar techniques, for example analyzing the production in one of the largest journals in the area -"Public Understanding of Science" [Bauer and Howard, 2012;Suerdem et al, 2013;Smallman, 2016].…”