Expressions of Intent for International Polar Year 2007-2008 Activities

Expression of Interest Details

PROPOSAL INFORMATION

Popularization of Northern Scholarly Articles for Public Interest  (Pop Scholar)

Outline
The goal of this project is to make scholarly writing about the North more accessible to the general public, in both the North and the South. The scale of the International Polar Year and the mass media attention that it will generate make this a perfect time to attract the general public to polar research. While many people are interested in the North, and aware of Northern issues in so much as they are presented in newspapers and on the evening news, such interested non-specialists don’t have an obvious place to turn to get more detailed, in-depth information about Northern research. Our goal is to provide those people with a place to go for solid, complex information presented in an easy-to-read, accessible manner. The Arctic Institute of North America, which houses the journal Arctic, is an ideal place to undertake this project. Arctic is a leading multidisciplinary scholarly journal focusing on the North, which publishes quarterly for a largely academic audience. Many of its articles about science and culture in the North would have wide interest for a public audience, but the language and format in which they are presented is not designed for a non-academic audience. We believe that making the synopses of academic articles more user-friendly will inspire interested readers to pursue further knowledge about the North. Each quarter, we will select two to three articles from Arctic for “popularisation” and provide those synopses on the AINA/Arctic website. Arctic, like most other scholarly journals, is now in the process of enhancing its online presence. By mounting these synopses on the Web and making them freely accessible, we are furthering that endeavour and significantly broadening our reach beyond that of a subscriber-based print journal. We expect this site to become a one-stop portal for Northerners, media, and interested readers in the South. A key aspect of the project will be to partner with other Canadian and international journals with a Northern focus to expand the service to a wider range of articles that are potentially of public interest. Etudes/Inuit/Studies, which focuses on the social sciences and is administered by the Inuksiutiit Katimajiit Association, is interested in partnering with us by providing some of their articles for popularisation. The project will also partner with Native organizations such as the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami to identify priority topics of interest to Northerners and assist with translation services in the appropriate language for each region covered by a given article. Ultimately, we would like to see links from Northern community groups’ own websites to the AINA/Arctic website to broaden interest and access to the article synopses.

What significant advance(s) in relation to the IPY themes and targets can be anticipated from this project?
This truly interdisciplinary project has the distinct potential to advance all six of the IPY themes. Since Arctic is a multidisciplinary journal, and we hope to partner with other journals that focus even more heavily on the social sciences, we expect to be writing synopses for articles about everything from environment to exploration to community development.

What international collaboration is involved in this project?
We have not yet solidified participation from international journals, but expect that after our initial work on the Canadian journals, we will be in a position to expand to international journals on Northern Studies.

FIELD ACTIVITY DETAILS

Geographical location(s) for the proposed field activities:

Approximate timeframe(s) for proposed field activities:
Arctic: n/a
Antarctic: n/a

Significant facilities will be required for this project:

Will the project leave a legacy of infrastructure?

How is it envisaged that the required logistic support will be secured?

Has the project been "endorsed" at a national or international level?

PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND STRUCTURE

Is the project a short-term expansion (over the IPY 2007-2008 timeframe) of an existing plan, programme or initiative or is it a new autonomous proposal?
Yes

The popularising of the scientific scholarly articles will be affiliated with the existing journal Arctic and the Arctic Institute of North America, but they will be a new undertaking for the Director of Communication and Education at AINA in the IPY.

How will the project be organised and managed?
The project will be organized and managed by the Editor of Arctic, Dr. Karen McCullough, and AINA’s Director of Communication and Education, Dr. Dawn Johnston. The project will be on-going – we expect to select the journal articles that have the most potential for public interest in both the North and the South, and write plain-language synopses of the articles to place on the AINA website. Since the journal is quarterly, published in September, December, March and June, we plan for the popularised article descriptions to appear on the website to coincide with the dates that the journal goes to press. Articles from other journals would be mounted according to their own press schedules.

What are the initial plans of the project for addressing the education, outreach and communication issues outlined in the Framework document?
This project is all about education and outreach – those are our primary goals. The publication of these synopses on the AINA and Arctic websites will marry scholarly research with the general public, thereby contributing explicitly to the IPY goals of education and outreach.

What are the initial plans of the project to address data management issues (as outlined in the Framework document?

How is it proposed to fund the project?
We will need to secure funds for translation services (estimated $6000/year) as well as technical support for mounting the synopses on the website, but expect that we will be able to secure such support from industry partners.

Is there additional information you wish to provide?
This project is, initially, quite small in scope, but it represents a recognition of the importance of making scholarly writing – especially scientific scholarly writing – accessible to a broader segment of the population. We also believe that the project has the distinct potential to grow as other journals come on board, and we welcome the opportunity to collaborate with them on this project.

PROPOSER DETAILS

Dr Karen McCullough
Editor, Arctic, Arctic Institute of North America
MacKimmie Library Tower
University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB
T2N 1N4
Canada

Tel: 403-220-4049
Mobile: no
Fax: 403-282-4609
Email:

Other project members and their affiliation