JFS: Vol 79, Number 11
Editorial
Exciting New Opportunities for Communicating Scientific Information Our recent Take 5 video by Dr. Bryony James on “Quantification of Pizza Baking Properties of Different Cheeses, and Their Correlation with Cheese Functionality” was a big hit. As they say, it went viral! Before discussing the remarkable details of the event, I (Foegeding) need to travel a bit back in time to when I was working on my Masters of Science at the Univ. of Missouri. There was the urban legend (or should I say academic legend) of a student who put a 20-dollar bill in the copy of his thesis in the library, and returned 10 years later only to find the $20 right where it was left. While I am not sure if this happened, it is entirely plausible. Theses and dissertations are, shall we say, often sent to the library for more of a retirement than a career. Your debut in science in 1976, as it is still today, was publishing that first manuscript in a refereed journal. If your manuscript had major scientific, economic, or societal impact, it had to be picked up by the popular press to be presented to the world. My how things have changed since 1976. Now the story of how measuring cheese melting on pizza became a worldwide sensation. It starts with the decision of the staff of the Journal of Food Science to introduce Take 5 for Food Science videos as a way to move information reported in a recent article to a more general audience. We evaluate all accepted articles and make an educated guess on which ones have 1) content of interest to the public and 2) are able to be communicated in five minutes. The article on cheese melting fit the bill because it was taking a unique material science approach to measuring something that we all are familiar with – cheese melting on pizza. Moreover, I had heard Dr. James speak and knew she would deliver a captivating presentation. The video was posted on August 14th and then . . . .. - The first significant pickup was from the blog site io9.com on Friday, August 22. A sudden jump in video views that day was tracked back to the blog: http://animals.io9.com/ pizza-science-is-the-tastiest-science-1625712639 - NBC News posted a story on August 22: http://www. nbcnews.com/science/weird-science/best-cheeses-pizzascience-finally-has-answer-n187171 - on Monday August 25, NPR had arranged an interview with Dr. James for a story they were working on, HuffPo posted a story at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/24/bestcheeses-for-pizza-science-video_n_5699445.html, and the LA Times posted this story: http://www.latimes.com/food/
dailydish/la-dd-study-cheese-pizza-20140825-story.html - NPR’s story went live on August 27: http://www.npr. org/blogs/thesalt/2014/08/27/342448774/science-crownsmozzarella-the-king-of-pizza-cheese?utm_source=npr_ email_a_friend&utm_medium=email&utm_content= 20140827&utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_term= - News outlets around the world, including Der Spiegel, Wired.co.uk, and a number of New Zealand outlets, also published stories that week - By August 28, the video had over 10,000 views and was making the rounds on local newscasts; some were making fun of it to a degree (but that is understandable; when you are working with in-depth science on food, most people fail to understand the significance). One of the new ways to follow the spread of a story is the Altmetric Report. This is an article-level metric that tracks and analyzes online activity, such as social media and online news, surrounding scholarly journal articles. The report, which can be viewed at http://www.altmetric.com/details.php? domain=onlinelibrary.wiley.com&citation_id=2616426, shows that it was mentioned by 24 news outlets, in 5 blogs, and was mentioned by 134 Tweeters. It is the #1 ranked Altmetric article JFS to date, and is in the top 5% of articles Altmetric has tracked across all journals. Back to the direct approach of simply reading the article or viewing the video – the paper had 1505 full-text views in the first 6 weeks after publication. At the time of writing this editorial, there have been over 24,000 views of the Take 5 video. The history of the media spread for this article should make all of us think about our science and how we can use the new and amazing ways to communicate our findings to society. We will always have our cloistered community of scientists – but advances in technologies have given us a worldwide audience of anyone with access to a television or computer. The opportunities are endless. Sincerely, –E. Allen Foegeding Editor in Chief, IFT Scientific Journals –Amanda K. Ferguson Associate Director, IFT Scientific Journals
iii
Editorial
Exciting New Opportunities for Communicating Scientific Information Our recent Take 5 video by Dr. Bryony James on “Quantification of Pizza Baking Properties of Different Cheeses, and Their Correlation with Cheese Functionality” was a big hit. As they say, it went viral! Before discussing the remarkable details of the event, I (Foegeding) need to travel a bit back in time to when I was working on my Masters of Science at the Univ. of Missouri. There was the urban legend (or should I say academic legend) of a student who put a 20-dollar bill in the copy of his thesis in the library, and returned 10 years later only to find the $20 right where it was left. While I am not sure if this happened, it is entirely plausible. Theses and dissertations are, shall we say, often sent to the library for more of a retirement than a career. Your debut in science in 1976, as it is still today, was publishing that first manuscript in a refereed journal. If your manuscript had major scientific, economic, or societal impact, it had to be picked up by the popular press to be presented to the world. My how things have changed since 1976. Now the story of how measuring cheese melting on pizza became a worldwide sensation. It starts with the decision of the staff of the Journal of Food Science to introduce Take 5 for Food Science videos as a way to move information reported in a recent article to a more general audience. We evaluate all accepted articles and make an educated guess on which ones have 1) content of interest to the public and 2) are able to be communicated in five minutes. The article on cheese melting fit the bill because it was taking a unique material science approach to measuring something that we all are familiar with – cheese melting on pizza. Moreover, I had heard Dr. James speak and knew she would deliver a captivating presentation. The video was posted on August 14th and then . . . .. - The first significant pickup was from the blog site io9.com on Friday, August 22. A sudden jump in video views that day was tracked back to the blog: http://animals.io9.com/ pizza-science-is-the-tastiest-science-1625712639 - NBC News posted a story on August 22: http://www. nbcnews.com/science/weird-science/best-cheeses-pizzascience-finally-has-answer-n187171 - on Monday August 25, NPR had arranged an interview with Dr. James for a story they were working on, HuffPo posted a story at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/24/bestcheeses-for-pizza-science-video_n_5699445.html, and the LA Times posted this story: http://www.latimes.com/food/
dailydish/la-dd-study-cheese-pizza-20140825-story.html - NPR’s story went live on August 27: http://www.npr. org/blogs/thesalt/2014/08/27/342448774/science-crownsmozzarella-the-king-of-pizza-cheese?utm_source=npr_ email_a_friend&utm_medium=email&utm_content= 20140827&utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_term= - News outlets around the world, including Der Spiegel, Wired.co.uk, and a number of New Zealand outlets, also published stories that week - By August 28, the video had over 10,000 views and was making the rounds on local newscasts; some were making fun of it to a degree (but that is understandable; when you are working with in-depth science on food, most people fail to understand the significance). One of the new ways to follow the spread of a story is the Altmetric Report. This is an article-level metric that tracks and analyzes online activity, such as social media and online news, surrounding scholarly journal articles. The report, which can be viewed at http://www.altmetric.com/details.php? domain=onlinelibrary.wiley.com&citation_id=2616426, shows that it was mentioned by 24 news outlets, in 5 blogs, and was mentioned by 134 Tweeters. It is the #1 ranked Altmetric article JFS to date, and is in the top 5% of articles Altmetric has tracked across all journals. Back to the direct approach of simply reading the article or viewing the video – the paper had 1505 full-text views in the first 6 weeks after publication. At the time of writing this editorial, there have been over 24,000 views of the Take 5 video. The history of the media spread for this article should make all of us think about our science and how we can use the new and amazing ways to communicate our findings to society. We will always have our cloistered community of scientists – but advances in technologies have given us a worldwide audience of anyone with access to a television or computer. The opportunities are endless. Sincerely, –E. Allen Foegeding Editor in Chief, IFT Scientific Journals –Amanda K. Ferguson Associate Director, IFT Scientific Journals
iii
