Geobites: Down-to-earth summaries of new geoscience research for a broad
audience
Abstract
The academic literature is the primary source for current developments
in science. But limited access to journals as well as the widespread use
of technical jargon can inhibit the dissemination of new knowledge to
scientists from other fields and to non-scientists. These serve as major
barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration with non-geoscientists and
to efforts to further public understanding of geoscience research.
Meanwhile, traditional science news focuses on topics of obvious
interest to the public, such as geohazards or climate change. While
engaging with non-geoscientists on these topics is important, the
majority of geoscience research lacks a mechanism for generating public
interest. “Bites” sites, originally introduced in the astronomy
community, are blogs dedicated to communicating new developments in
science to a broad audience. Each bite is an engaging, short (400-700
word) summary that explains an exciting new scientific paper and
discusses its importance in the field. Bites are typically written by
graduate students and other early career scientists about recently
published articles that have not been picked up by more traditional
science news outlets. These sites serve three key purposes: 1) to keep
the interested public – especially university students who may consider
careers in geoscience – up to date with recent developments in the
field, 2) to generate attention for new work that traditional science
media outlets may miss, and 3) to give early career scientists practice
with public-facing writing and editing, which are critical skills both
within and beyond academia. Here we present the new site Geobites,
targeted at communicating new geoscience (broadly defined) research to
the public. We show examples of articles on Geobites, diagram the
structure of a good article, present initial site analytics, and solicit
feedback from the geoscience communication community.