A blog post by Dr Claire Hastings I first wanted to re-ignite the embargo debate a couple of years ago after I, like many press officers, received an email from Eureka Alert saying the journal PNAS would no longer embargo a paper if any of the data was previously published on a preprint server. Since …More
By Daisy Barton Evaluation is one of the trickier and - dare we say it - neglected aspects of our work. We all have an instinctive feeling for what great impact looks like, but how do we actually evaluate the success of our work and convince the people we work with that what we’re doing …More
by Alice Kay You may remember that Stempra ran an event at the Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS) last November outlining the recommendations for press officers from the Academy’s extensive report on enhancing the use of scientific evidence to judge the potential benefits and harms of medicine. One of the recommendations had been for the …More
By Kate Mcallister We are really pleased to report that our first big Stempra Scotland event in recent memory – held at the University of Edinburgh in May – was a success! As well as a brilliant line-up of speakers, we hosted around 45 press officers and science communication professionals from all over the UK, …More
By Claire Hastings We may be science communicators, but in any press office, preparing for and reacting in a crisis is our responsibility. Whether you’re the one fielding calls, writing statements or calling the shots – we all have to know what to do when disaster strikes. But how can we prepare for something we hope will …More
Date and Time: 7pm Monday 26 March 2018 Venue: The Castle Farringdon, 34-35 Cowcross St, London, EC1M 6DB Attendees: Rachel Argo Daisy Barton Seil Collins Daniel Gooch Claire Hastings Emily Head Hayley Jarvis Erin Johnson Alice Kay Jo Kelly Fareha Lasker Fiona Lethbridge Simon Levey Sophia McCully Natasha Neill Shamim Quadir Freya Robb Joseph Shuttleworth …More
In November, Stempra ran an event in conjunction with and hosted at the Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS) on the findings and recommendations the AMS report on report on enhancing the use of scientific evidence to judge the potential benefits and harms of medicines. Among the report’s many recommendations aimed at different sectors of the …More
On a mild night approaching the end of October, Stempra members gathered in The Crown Tavern in Farringdon to discuss unconscious bias. Omar Jamshed, Stempra committee member and chair of the event, started the proceedings by asking panel members if STEM has a diversity problem… On the panel were Lenna Cumberbatch Equality, Diversity and Inclusion …More
The second northern Stempra event was held in September at the University of Manchester, in response to the clear appetite for additional events held outside of London. Stempra Chair, Claire Hastings, welcomed some forty press & comms officers to the event and introduced a packed programme. First up was Jamie Brown, News and Media Relations …More
Stempra members might have seen the recent discussions of a case where an organisation was approached to comment on an embargoed report by a journalist, only to be told that said report couldn’t be shared with them at that point. It turned out that the organisation’s experts never got sight of the report before it …More