Science and Development Network - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

SciDev.Net is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to providing reliable and authoritative information about science and technology in the developing world to policymakers, researchers, the media and civil society.

The organisation was founded in 2001 in response to the significant gap in scientific knowledge between rich and poor countries and with the understanding that “those who stand to benefit the most from modern science and technology are also those with the least access to information about it." SciDev.Net seeks to redress this imbalance via it’s free-to-access website, regional networks and specialist workshops.

SciDev.Net aims to contribute to sustainable development by increasing the availability of accessible science and technology information in order to reduce poverty, improve health and raise standards of living around the world.

The Website

The SciDev.Net website is available in four languages: English Spanish, French and Chinese. Content includes: News, Analysis, Summaries, Practical Guides, and Spotlights.

News: SciDev.Net's news coverage is at the heart of its website and articles are added daily. Freelance journalists throughout the developing world write much of this material and work closely with a team of editors to ensure timely and accurate coverage of breaking news.

Analysis: Longer feature and opinion articles delve deeper into the issues and examine the ideas and projects that inform the international scientific agenda.

Summaries: SciDev.Net also has a special agreement with the world's top scientific journals Science and Nature

Nature (journal)

Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...

, which allows visitors to access a selection of full text articles and research papers for free. Summaries of articles from other reputable sources, including news agencies and other peer reviewed journals, are also available.

Practical guides: The website also provides practical guides for science journalists, scientists and policy-makers to improve science communication in developing countries.

Spotlights: These special collections of articles focus on a ‘hot topic’ and provide an in-depth look at the key issues facing developing countries. Spotlights published to date include:

Topics & Regions

The SciDev.Net website was restructured and relaunched in March 2008 to provide access to material via ‘topic gateways’, which bring together news updates and analysis on key issues. The topics covered are:

Science and technology news is also available via ‘regional gateways’:

China

Latin America and the Caribbean

Middle East and North Africa

South-Asia

South-East Asia

Sub-Saharan Africa

Coverage is informed by regional networks consisting of an extensive number of journalists, consultants, advisors and registered users based in developing countries. They work to ensure that a developing country perspective is represented. They also support the development of professional science journalism skills via science communication workshops and provide essential on-the-job training opportunities for science journalists.

Signing Up

Visitors who sign-up with SciDev.Net receive a free weekly email with all the latest stories from the website. These are available in English, Spanish, Chinese and French. Those who sign-up can comment on articles and submit announcements, events, jobs and grants to SciDev.Net for free to be featured on the website and in the weekly emails.

RSS Feeds & Creative Commons

The latest news can appear instantly on other websites through a free SciDev.Net global, regional or topic specific newsfeed. Each newsfeed carries the latest news stories, including a headline, introductory sentence and link to the full article.

For busy researchers or editors who need to sift through information from many sources, RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

RSS

-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...

enables instantaneous delivery of SciDev.Net news stories to a 'news reader' soon as they are published.

In addition, all SciDev.Net website material is free to reproduce under a Creative Commons

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...

Attribution 2.0 licence. Under the terms of this licence users are permitted to copy, distribute, display and perform the content, and make derivative works so long as the original author and website are quoted as the source.

Funders, Supporters & Partnerships

Funders of SciDev.Net include:

UK Department for International Development (DFID)
Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)
Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS)
International Development Research Centre (IDRC)

Partners
SciDev.Net works with a range of organisations at global, regional and national levels to achieve shared objectives. These include:

SciDev.Net is also affiliated with TWAS, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, based in Trieste, Italy.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.