This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
I asked Alessandro Delfanti, a member of the Scientific Staff at the Journal of Science Communication, to describe and explain the journal to our readers.
The Journal of Science Communication (JCOM) is an online, open access journal on the relationship between scientific research and the media. It explores a world in which communication is more and more important for science.
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Modern science has always been strictly related to the media – just think about the role of the printed book in the scientific revolution of the 17th century. But in today's societies, communication is absolutely crucial for science's development and to create a better and more democratic scientific citizenship.
One can define JCOM as a social sciences journal, yet its readers are scholars in the field of public communication of science and technology as well as science journalists, scientific researchers, museum operators, and so on.
In the archive you will find, freely accessible by anybody, ten years of research articles, comments and reviews on every problem linked to science communication: science journalism, public participation to science, science and the mass media, science museums, scholarly publishing, online science, and so on.
Articles are published in both English and the author's primary language: this is why JCOM publishes lots of works in European languages as well as from emerging countries, mostly South American.
Another important feature of this journal is that it endorses free circulation of culture: JCOM is not only open access, but also published under a Creative Commons license that gives the community the opportunity to freely spread its contents.
After all, JCOM was born at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), an institution based in Italy that since the 90s has had a crucial role in the development of online scholarly publishing and in the open access movement.
Previously in this series:
What is: Science Online London