From the 2011 AAAS Annual Meeting

Greetings from Washington, DC, where I’m attending the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Yesterday I gave a presentation here, titled “Writing Scientific Papers in English”. I’ve placed 2 versions in the AuthorAID Resource Library. One is in PDF format and includes all the images. The other is a PowerPoint file that, to save space, includes only text.

This year the AAAS meeting theme is “Science Without Borders”. Today I chaired a session titled “Publication Without Borders: Spanning Countries, Disciplines, Audiences, and Roles”.

The session included 3 speakers. The first was Deborah L Partain, from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. She described how a publications specialist joins scientists on the program’s ocean expeditions, in order to help start preparing reports.

The second speaker—Banalata Sen, from the journal Environmental Health Perspectives—summarized the journal’s activities in education and outreach. These activities include science lessons for students, research-communication workshops, and partnerships with journals in various countries.

The third speaker was Sara Gwynn, from the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP). She described INASP’s Journals Online projects, which increase the visibility and quality of journals in developing countries. (AuthorAID is another INASP project.)

All 3 speakers' presentations were excellent: informative, clear, and well suited to the audience. I’m very grateful to the speakers.

These sessions yesterday and today were at 8 a.m. Despite the early hour, some people attended. And others can learn about the sessions from this blog post!

Wishing you a good week— Barbara