Broadening participation in science through arts-facilitated experiences at a cultural festival.

A key broadening participation challenge for science communication is to reach non-traditional audiences beyond those already interested in science. In this study we test a "Guerilla Science" approach that blends elements of access, by removing barriers to participation, with those of inclusion, by designing participant-centered activities, for reaching an art-interested adult audience at the FIGMENT art festival in New York City. Our results show that participants at Guerilla Science were similar to festival goers overall in their connection to and interest in science, indicating the effectiveness of the approach for engaging non-traditional audiences and those who might not self-select into science activities.

Experimenting with engagement : commentary on: Taking our own medicine: on an experiment in science communication.

Social scientists can explore questions about what counts as knowledge and how researchers-including social science researchers-can produce that knowledge. An art/space installation examining issues of public participation in science demonstrates the process of co-creation of knowledge about public participation, not simply the co-creation of the meaning of the installation itself.

Open access publishing, article downloads, and citations: randomised controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE: To measure the effect of free access to the scientific literature on article downloads and citations. DESIGN: Randomised controlled trial. SETTING: 11 journals published by the American Physiological Society. PARTICIPANTS: 1619 research articles and reviews. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Article readership (measured as downloads of full text, PDFs, and abstracts) and number of unique visitors (internet protocol addresses). Citations to articles were gathered from the Institute for Scientific Information after one year. INTERVENTIONS: Random assignment on online publication of articles published in 11 scientific journals to open access (treatment) or subscription access (control). RESULTS: Articles assigned to open access were associated with 89% more full text downloads (95% confidence interval 76% to 103%), 42% more PDF downloads (32% to 52%), and 23% more unique visitors (16% to 30%), but 24% fewer abstract downloads (-29% to -19%) than subscription access articles in the first six months after publication. Open access articles were no more likely to be cited than subscription access articles in the first year after publication. Fifty nine per cent of open access articles (146 of 247) were cited nine to 12 months after publication compared with 63% (859 of 1372) of subscription access articles. Logistic and negative binomial regression analysis of article citation counts confirmed no citation advantage for open access articles. CONCLUSIONS: Open access publishing may reach more readers than subscription access publishing. No evidence was found of a citation advantage for open access articles in the first year after publication. The citation advantage from open access reported widely in the literature may be an artefact of other causes.