One of Dementia Researchers core objectives is to “Facilitate sharing of research across different fields of discovery”. With many conferences and events now taking place both in-person and online, equitable access to research presentations has dramatically improved. However, there are still challenges and more that could be done to improve access.
Dementia Researcher supports the concept of open access, not only to scientific publications, but also the presentation of research – hearing and seeing a researcher present their work can be far more engaging than reading the paper, and you get added detail or explanation that may not make it past the reviewer’s red pen!
Why is matters.
Why do we care? Well open access ensures that the results of research are available to anyone with internet access. This democratisation of knowledge breaks down barriers to information access that can hinder research progress, particularly in low-income countries or those without funding and institutional support.
Dementia Researcher support.
Dementia Researcher is here to help ensure your seminars, webinars, conferences, and events are well attended, and that the outputs reach as many people as possible.
Here is how we can help:
- We offer a self-service way for you to add your event to our listings. Simply click register on the top of our website, go through the 1 minute process and then head to our advertise page [1]. It is completely free, and your event will be included in our listings, get posted to over 8,500 people on our social media platforms, and be included in our next available bulletin which reaches over 3,500 people each Friday.
- If your event is in-person, and taking place in the UK, Dementia Researcher can attend to record a selection of presentations. The recordings will also be made available to you, and added to our YouTube channel, website, and social media channels. We won’t charge you, and this ensures free and open access to reach a wider audience. Here is an example of one [2] (link to YouTube) we did recently.
- Webinars can be easy to arrange, but it can be disappointing when too few people attend. Well, if you send us the recording, we can add this to our YouTube channel, it will ensure you reach more people, and that the recording will continue to be available long after zoom would have normally deleted it. We will also arrange for captions to be added, professional thumbnails, chapters and include the bio’s of presenters on our website. Here is an example of a recording / livestream [3] (link to YouTube) we did recently.
- Between our various social media channels and newsletters, we have over 10,000 subscribers, and we have some clever tech that will allow your online event to be directly livestreamed to all of them (and more when the algorithms pickup the stream) – Free! This may sound complicated, but it isn’t, we can simply take a feed from your Zoom or Teams, and directly beam to our audience. This is a great way to ensure you reach new audiences in the moment, and to allow watchers to catch-up as soon as they join.
- Dementia Researcher has a growing community platform that is able to host invite only or pre-registration online events, discussion spaces and webinars – talk to us if you’re looking for a new space, and a potential audience – specifically researchers.
We’re always open to collaborations and new ideas, so if you have an idea or want to work together on a seminar or symposium, drop us a line. We can help with the tech, hosting and sharing.
Who is in charge and owns the content?
The content we create is owned by you; we will simply help capture it and provide a platform for sharing. You can request that the content be removed at any time, or request that we delay its publication. We will do the work and include our log, but ensure that it is published in a format that is clear that it was your event with your branding – it will be grouped into playlists, and include links to your website, socials etc.
We’re excited at the prospect of helping you get your research out to a wider audience, and raising the profile of you work – because what you’re sharing is too important to be lost and forgotten a week later!
What’s the catch?
No catch, it is all free, the only thing we ask is that we be allowed to exclusivley host the content on our platforms (don’e in a way that also allows you to embed the content in your website / socials etc). If content is hosted in multiple spaces it lowers the chance of search engines picking up the content.
Leading by Example
Over the past three years Alzheimer’s Association and ISTAART has led the way with its efforts to openly share discovery. With free online attendance for ISTAART members to its conferences, and hundreds of webinars freely available both to attend live, and then shared through their recording’s platform. They cover every possible research area, and with a host of career talks. Recordings of all their webinars can be found at https://training.alz.org/research-webinars [5]