EAGER: New Paths for Communicating Science

Menlo College, Atherton CA

Investigators

Abstract

Despite the wide diversity of expertise in social science, women are underrepresented in scholarship and in news coverage of social science expertise. Men are more likely to be invited to talks, to have their work assigned on course syllabi, and to be contacted by the media for reactions to current events. But many social science experts are women; they are simply not as visible or well-known, and it is easier for those seeking expertise to call on those scholars with whom they are already familiar. Reducing this implicit bias against women requires positive steps to make the expertise of women more visible and easily accessible. The Women Also Know Stuff (WAKS) project does exactly that. Created in February 2016, the Women Also Know Stuff initiative is working to make it easier for scholars and journalists to identify experts who are women, through a website of women experts and an active Twitter feed. Women Also Know Stuff has worked for the past 20 months to populate and publicize a crowd-sourced online database that highlights the expertise of women scholars. The Women Also Know Stuff Editorial Board collects and manages this information with the goal of promoting women's public and professional engagement. This project will allow women listed on the website to give citations of 1) peer-reviewed published journal articles and books and 2) media interviews, by allowing them to check boxes for relevant subject areas (e.g., conflict studies, international relations) next to each citation. Icons (e.g., stars) next to the names of scholars will indicate if they have provided a linked citation for a given subject area. This system of linked citations and icons will allow users of the website to narrow their searches to only those scholars who have citations listed for publications and/or media interviews in the subject area of interest. This quality control feature will also encourage women scholars to be more attentive to their profiles on the website, thus making it more likely that they will list (and provide relevant linked citations to their work on) topics in the news, thus increasing its relevance for media users and the likelihood that news outlets will contact women scholars for comment on current events. In sum, adding these quality control icons will both improve the usefulness of the website and also increase its utilization. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.