Summer 2009

From the Chair

New members

Sci Comm news

Eurochat

Feature: The day CERN was more popular than NASA

Feature: Biding time

Feature: The importance
of good design

Feature: From around the world

Event Report: The
numbers game

Event Report: When lives are on the line

Event Report: The new media officers

Event Report: Achieving global coverage

Interview: Ian Sample,
The Guardian

Stempra newsletter

FEATURE: Biding time, a perspective on embargoes

If the heated debate that took place earlier this summer at the World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) is anything to go by, the controversy that surrounds the use of embargoes shows no sign of diminishing.

Yet, while critics may malign embargoes as a way of controlling the media, I would argue that their use actually helps facilitate getting good stories into the press.

The embargo enables science press officers to plan ahead and make sure our scientists know when to make themselves available for interviews. They also create a level playing field when sending information out to media outlets as well as help coordinate research announcements involving a number of collaborating organisations, enabling each institution to know when certain stories can be published on their websites.

A useful tool

Scientists often dread their research being reported before it is accepted in a peer reviewed journal, thus jeopardising their chances of being published. However, the use of embargoes helps press officers to reassure their scientists that no information will appear in the public domain until their paper has been published.

Explaining the embargo system of press releases is also helpful when encouraging scientists to give press officers as much warning as possible about a paper coming out. If we know when a paper has been submitted or accepted, we can draft a press release in advance and are not caught on the back foot trying to get something signed off at the last minute that may involve numerous organisations.

This is especially important because of the increasing amount of scientific journals that are published online. Often, scientists, who may be used to waiting months before a submitted paper appears in print, do not know that their research paper is going up online until just before it appears on the world wide web.

Drawbacks

Of course, timings of embargoes may be more favourable to some than others. But as the old adage goes, you can please some of the people some of the time but you can’t please all of the people all of the time. As long as the rules of embargoes are kept – and exceptions are not made – then everybody knows where they stand.

Some claim that the use of embargoes is a way in which science journals can have power over the journalists ensuring that the journal reports on the research first. But surely the very fact that the research has appeared in a scientific journal gives it more weight, with the knowledge that it has been fully scrutinised and peer reviewed?

Another criticism of embargoes is that they kill off investigative journalism – resulting in so-called churnalism – with each newspaper running the same cut-and-pasted press release. However, I am sure that there are many noteworthy scientific papers that have been published and not been picked up by the press. It is perhaps not the embargo system that is jeopardising science journalism but the lack of resources in journalism itself

There is no doubt that cutbacks mean that there are fewer reporters, with their workload also increased to provide online content. This means that investigative journalism can be as seen as a luxury (see Guardian correspondent Ian Sample’s views on embargos in Interview).

At least, with information put out under embargo, science is promoted through the mass media to as wide an audience as possible. Having a tool like the embargo to help press officers get stories into the media is not only important in the public engagement of science to show not only how taxpayer’s money is spent on research – but also to encourage a new generation of scientists.

Tara Womersley
Press Officer, University of Edinburgh
tara.womersley@ed.ac.uk

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