Calling all Academics - The Conversation Canada wants your input
Earlier this year The Conversation Canada presented at a conference for research administrators, and they gave evidence to support that they engage a huge audience, attracting more than 10.7 million users per month to The Conversation (all editions), and a readership of 50 million through republication of its articles by more than 22,000 media outlets worldwide, yielding a global reach of 38.2 million readers a month through Creative Commons republication and growing.
In addition to Canada, the Conversation has sites in the US, UK, Australia, Africa, France, Indonesia, and Spain, with all their content coming from university scholars. UofT is one of the Conversation Canada’s 18 founding members, all of which are leading Canadian universities; see all founding members.
Due to the proliferation of fake news and the decline of quality journalism, The Conversation Canada is premised on "a partnership between academics and journalists that creates quality explanatory journalism free for anyone to share and republish;” (see their webpage for citation.)
For a researcher to participate, you visit their “Become an Author” page to verify your institution and credentials, create an account, and then you start writing, with written contributions in the range of 700-1200 words. Editors will work with you to finalize the submission, but they have stated that academics have ultimate say in the article’s final version.
As a recent example, Professor Ronald Beiner in UTM’s Political Science Department contributed an article at the end of July 2018, "Stephen Bannon's world: Dangerous minds in dangerous times," and it has already been picked up by various social media outlets, primarily FaceBook (39) and Twitter (10), as well as further media channels (e.g., Salon and Raw Story).
Vice-Principal, Research, Professor Kent Moore also promoted his work on this website in 2015, "Declining winter sea ice near Greenland spells cooler climate for Europe," and likewise found it a positive way to engage with the broader community.
The Conversation Canada is a free resource, i.e., no paywall for readers, and free to share/republish.
Please see their site from the link above, as well as the “Who we Are” page. It is a great and easy way to broaden the reach of your work, to get UTM research and researchers on other people’s radar, and perhaps tap into a whole new audience.
If you have any further questions or would like to run a potential article through our office for review, please feel free to contact Carla DeMarco.