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Ask our authors anything: new PLOS ‘AMA’ series debuts on redditscience

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PLOS, in conjunction with reddit, is pleased to announce the April 22 launch of ‘PLOS Science Wednesday’ a weekly Ask Me Anything (AMA) series featuring PLOS authors in live chats on redditscience (/r/science), the popular online gathering place for researchers, students and others interested in science.

For each PLOS Science Wednesday an expected audience of 10,000 (usually many more) /r/science members have the opportunity to chat directly with the featured PLOS author (or team), while anyone with an Internet connection is free to read along. Authors are available on an AMA for a full hour (1 to 2 pm ET) to answer posted questions and explain the science behind a research article or editorial recently published by a PLOS journal. Transcripts of these completed AMAs are then available to anyone for later reading, re-mixing, or reuse from the /r/science AMA archive.

PLOS created PLOS Science Wednesday to showcase new research while providing our authors a place to communicate their science and interact directly with fellow researchers and readers. Here’s a schedule of who’s up first on PLOS Science Wednesday AMAs, along with their topics and the PLOS journal article/editorial they’ll be talking about.

April 22: Andrew Beck — Open Data exchange between cancer researchers; PLOS Medicine, Open Access to Large Scale Datasets is Needed to Translate Knowledge of Cancer Heterogenity into Better Patient Outcomes – Click here, to read completed AMA transcript.

April 29: Tom Baden and Andre Maia Chagas — 3-D Printing your own lab equipment; PLOS Biology, Open Labware: 3-D Printing Your Own Lab Equipment — Click here to read completed AMA transcript.

May 6:  Andrew Farke Aquilops, the smallest, oldest horned dinosaur; PLOS ONE, A Ceratopsian Dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Western North America, and the Bigeography of Neoceratopsia; author’s blog posts introducing Aquilops and the team story behind this paper. Click here to read the completed AMA transcript.

May 13: Jeff Clune, Kai Olav Ellefsen, Jean-Baptiste Mouret — Creating computational brain models for artificial intelligencePLOS Computational Biology, Neural Modularity Helps Organisms Evolve to Learn New Skills without Forgetting Old Skills. Here is a video summary of this work by the authors. Click here to read the completed AMA PLOS Currents Outbreakstranscript.

May 20: Megan Head, “The Extent and Consequences of P-Hacking in Science PLOS Biology. Click here to read the completed AMA transcript.

May 27: Jelte M Wicherts; Why Publishing Everything Is More Effective than Selective Publishing of Statistically Significant Results.” PLOS ONE. Click here to read the completed AMA transcript.

Next up! June 3: Seth Blumberg, research scientist/physician UCSF & Jennifer Zipprich, epidemiologist with the Immunization Branch at the California Department of Public Health. Assessing Measles Transmission in the United States Following a Large Outbreak in California, PLOS Currents Outbreaks

(Other PLOS Science Wednesday redditscience AMA dates & authors will be announced shortly. Check The Official PLOS Blog and watch for #PLOSredditAMA Twitter notices)

Important details:

  • Anyone discussing a PLOS Science Wednesday AMA on Twitter is asked to use the hashtag #PLOSredditAMA with the author’s Twitter handle(s).
  • reddit has a downloadable AMA app (for asking questions and leaving comments during the AMA) available here.
  • PLOS editors select authors and papers for this series; authors (or Academic Editors) who wish to nominate an author/paper for a PLOS Science Wednesday AMA should send an email to plosreddit@plos.org with author’s name, article title, the PLOS journal the article appeared in and a lay summary (50-100 words) describing what the research is about.

Who’s Who:

Reddit logoreddit is one of the web’s oldest and largest open source communities, where registered members post links, comment and rate posted items in a wide variety of subject areas. As of March 2015, reddit received more than 6.6 billion page views and 151 million unique visitors. /r/science is a lively 8 million member “subreddit” within reddit. Each subreddit is independent and moderated by a team of volunteers.

2etoq0zjwxicokm1woge_bigger As a nonprofit, Open Access publisher with a mission to lead a transformation in scientific communication, PLOS continuously seeks innovative ways to disseminate research and advance science. Initiatives such as PLOS Science Wednesday on redditscience reflect our commitment to expand the impact of research beyond publication, and enable broader community inclusion for commenting and review.

We encourage you to leave your thoughts on PLOS Science Wednesday AMAs and related issues in the comments section, below.

You may also be interested in…

  • Join the PLOS email list — get monthly updates with news of general interest to researchers and other PLOS readers.
  • About the PLOS journals — find out which journal is the right fit for your research.
  • ‘All good science deserves to be published’   how to submit to PLOS ONE.

 

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