Scientists are full of ideas—and we want to know about them!

The Academy is having an extraordinary impact in the online world. Our overall social media following has grown from 30,000 to nearly half a million since October last year. This phenomenal growth rate is solely due to our highly focused and professional work in producing original video, article and image campaigns, and partnering with mainstream news organisations to communicate quality, verified science.

Do you have ideas?

Scientists can provide a rich and virtually endless source of inspiration and expertise on an enormous range of topics. We’re looking for ideas from Fellows, early- and mid-career researchers, National Committee members—in fact any scientist—on scientific research that is likely to be of wide general interest, and that may be of interest to media.

All ideas are welcome, as long as they’re backed by science. In particular, if you have had an interesting paper that has been accepted but not yet published, and that you think has potential to really make a splash, you can share a draft with us under embargo—email it with a short summary to video@science.org.au. Indicate which journal it will be published in and when you expect publication. We will let you know if we are able to produce content based on your work—and can assure you that we will not publish anything until your paper has been released by the journal.

We can produce videos and articles fairly quickly, but the more time we have the better the product will be.

Expert reviewers essential

We also regularly reach out to Fellows and other experts to review our videos and articles before publication to make sure the science is accurate. Thank you to all who have supported us so far, and please let us know if you’d like to be contacted as an expert, and what your field is.

You can see all our social media content by visiting www.science.org.au/curious and following the links to the our social media accounts. Make sure you’re following the Academy’s social media channels if you aren’t already.

As an example of our work, this recent video on the koala genome had more than 100,000 views on Facebook within a few days of release. Two Academy Fellows, Professor Jenny Graves and Professor Marilyn Renfree, were co-authors on the Nature Genetics paper that was the source of the science.