Science Communication or SciCom is the exercise of conveying findings in science to all possible stakeholders to improve its impact on society as well as scientific practices. These stakeholders include industry, government, social organisations, start-ups but most importantly, the taxpayer, which funds scientific research and should be the ultimate beneficiary of socio-economic goods that may accrue from techno-scientific endeavours.
The government contributes to the SciCom cause by supporting museums, festivals and multimedia shows etc. However, funding and State capacity issues have led to a mismatch between the activities conducted by the government and its connect with the society.
To fill this gap, SciCom professionals in India have developed a rich ensemble of activities, be it explaining science through performing arts Bharatnatyam, festivals, street performances, busking, Vigyan Jathas (science parades), movies and curated exhibits.
The necessity of SciCom is self-evident—it contributes to building a scientific temper in society, creates room for industry and NGOs to adopt relevant scientific practices, demonstrates why science needs to be funded at scale, and last but not least, opens the door for scientists to grasp local problems.
However, a scalable impact still eludes the community. For instance, according to the 3M survey of the State of Science 2022, a large number of Indians show high scepticism about science (76 per cent respondents). SciCom education in Indian universities lags far behind other contemporary universities globally due to lack of funds and expert instructors, who are in turn not available due to absence of institutionalised training in the subject. To achieve a scalable impact in India, two interventions will be necessary: professionalisation, and institutionalisation.
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The internal work
From the current state of nascent disorder, the natural next step for the SciCom community is to ‘professionalise’. This means that the community must define its work as a profession—define the various roles in SciCom, ways of work, best practices, norms, and standards of evaluation. For example, sub-disciplines of SciCom such as science writing, science journalism, and science history, should be defined and nuances of their differences be recognised.
This will open a lot of questions, say, what are the standards for good science writing or journalism? How should SciCom work be evaluated? How must SciCom professionals work with other stakeholders such as scientists, institutions, industry, government and public? For example, the monolithic profession of software/ product design has rendered a variety of roles such as product manager, frontend engineer, and backend engineer. The profession also has job descriptions for the roles, methodologies, and frameworks for carrying out work and detailed evaluation standards.
Such definitions will help improve the practice of SciCom in India, make the community aspire higher, and be able to evaluate their collective work. It will also provide a common vocabulary for the community to talk within themselves and with other stakeholders, leading to better outcomes. It will also help standardise SciCom training and programmes, identify gaps and intervene.
A word of caution: the suggestion of ‘professionalisation’ is not to create an ‘elite’ community that uses norms as a way to shut doors It should rather open gates—a college student who is a science YouTuber should be welcomed and provided with tools to evaluate her work and enhance the practice. And the community must not look at other mass channels such as OTT, or others with scorn, but build bridges to collaborate.
An example of such an intervention is seen in Australia through the genesis of Australian Science Communicators (ASC). ASC was formed in 1994 by the self-organisation of the SciCom community that used to work in silos. Formation of ASC led to interventions that coalesced the efforts of the SciCom professionals to a greater impact such as provisioning university courses and training for an expanding cohort of workers, increasing cooperation with academia and industry through specialised research centres and programmes, and greater connections with politicians, amongst others.
The process of professionalisation is an internal one. Indian SciCom professionals need to come together as for periodic meetings, sharing methods, learnings, and results and putting together resources that do not exist in India. While informal attempts to undertake this have happened in the recent past under the aegis of the annual India Science Festival conducted by FAST India, SciCom professionals need to, perhaps, go a step further. They should create a formal society, governed by themselves, aimed towards ensuring ethical practices in the profession in India.
This will slowly render into norms, best practices and evaluation methods informed by the lived experience of emerging SciCom professionals and their interactions within their ecosystems. And it will also have a multiplicative effect on their impact and give them a voice in the larger science and technology ecosystem.
There are many examples from other communities such as scientists organising themselves in communities such as American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Indian National Science Academy (INSA), among others. Or, the industry that has organised itself into communities such as SAE International, National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). Putting together clear objectives and principles, for such a society or an association, defining governance structures and a motivated startup team is the way to start.
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Way to institutionalise
The government and institutions must ensure that the SciCom community has much-needed institutional legitimacy. The government has clearly articulated the importance of SciCom through a variety of guidelines and schemes such as Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR), and INSPIRE, which is a welcome step.
However, most of these initiatives put the onus of science communication on the scientist, without explicitly recognising the role of a SciCom professional. The scientist is a definite stakeholder, but the execution of such tasks cannot be done by them alone. The first thing for the government is to institutionally recognise SciCom professionals and provide them with appropriate vehicles and resources to do their work.
One of the key vehicles is SciCom offices at institutions similar to those in other domains such as industry liaisoning and research management. The government must form schemes to provide seed funding for such offices and fellowship programmes to place SciCom officers in institutions. Competitive funds must be made available for SciCom officers, both in institutions and outside for background research, activities and work evaluation.
Lastly, the government can create the right incentives for institutions to do SciCom work by including it in ranking metrics such as National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF).
At an institutional level, some top science institutions in India such as the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TiFR) have already taken steps to develop separate SciCom offices. But many top institutions either don’t have a separate SciCom office or have a limited understanding of the practice.
Existing SciCom offices in India are generally small with just one to two people and they are often reduced to conducting engagements with a PR company or supporting institutional websites. Our top institutions need proper SciCom offices, with stated goals and objectives and a well-oiled team to meet these objectives.
In addition to that, higher education institutions need to provide SciCom training programmes. The training may be offered as electives with science, writing, or journalism degrees, eventually leading to an applied postgraduate specialisation in SciCom.
Fellowships or apprenticeships that involve training SciCom professionals in an environment of science research, such as in labs or by shadowing a scientist, will be useful in assuring practical learning.
We need to turbo-charge science communication in India. The foundation is here, it just needs the spark.
Varun Aggarwal is the Co-Founder, Foundation for Advancing Science and Technology. Views are personal.