Please take a minute to look over the community categories. Posting in the wrong category may result in deletion and continuously posting in the wrong categories may result in being banned from the community.
Curator’s Choice
Posting is restricted to Moderators only. This category includes the following.
Community announcements: Look out for Community sponsored hangout announcements or events, changes to the community structure or new community initiatives.
Highlighted posts: These are high impact or uniquely interesting posts selected by our team of curators. These will be reshares from our official +Science on Google+ pages. We’ll try to cover all disciplines and post types (news, original writing, images). You can search for highlighted posts using the hashtag #SoG +CuratorsChoice.
Science News (Pop Sci)
Did you see an interesting article in the popular science press, highlighting a recent breakthrough, that you’d like to post to the Community? Are you sharing a link to the news story, with a descriptive excerpt or a short summary? Original commentary or opinion is optional, and may only be a couple sentences. This is the new category for science news for ALL disciplines – from plasma physics to genetic engineering! Here are some examples of pop sci posts: [http://goo.gl/064qKR,http://goo.gl/Tu6Qxm].
No link-only posts: Please provide a short introduction to the content in the link (either in your own words or extracted from the linked article).
No Duplications: Do check recent postings to see if the same story has already been shared. Duplicate postings clutter up the community and dilute comments and responses by fragmenting them across multiple posts.
Limit to 3 posts/day: Because we expect this category to be crowded, we are asking that you limit your postings to no more than 3/day. Think quality, not quantity.
Engage with the Community: If you’ve posted the news story, you are probably interested in having a conversation with community members on the topic. Posters who do not engage in the comments will be suspected of using the community to build their SEO resumes and may be banned.
Category-Specific Posts
This is the place for good quality posts with significant original content or opinion. Your post can draw from multiple sources with a topical focus (http://goo.gl/133dGo), or be derived from one source, such as a published paper (http://goo.gl/Q4WKVs). Be sure to cite the original sources and link to a published paper or preprint. A news source (BBC/CNN/HuffingtonPost) or webpage (Bill’s Bogus Blog) is not the same as a peer-reviewed paper.
One way to think of this as a (micro)blog post written on Google+. We expect that the poster has moderate to advanced knowledge of the topic of the post and will be able to field questions, engage with the community and moderate a lively discussion. Pick a topic that excites you, do some research on it and compose a post!
Place your post in one of five broad categories:
- Applied (Material Science, Engineering, Computer Science)
- Earth (Ecology, Geology)
- Life (Biology, Medicine/Health, Neuroscience)
- Physical (Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Mathematics)
- Social (Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology)
Science Outreach
Science is a Verb: we see, act and interpret our world with science! This category is about engaging YOU, the Community member, with the process of science. We invite you to participate, use the hashtags in your posts, and recommend topics or people we can cover.
#AskAScientist: What would you ask an astronomer or virologist? What does a climate scientist think of climate change? We hope to feature one scientist or science writer a week to answer any questions you may have about the topic of their research, career choice, personal views or anything else. Let’s get a conversation going.
#ISeeTheWorldWithScience: Does a cat picture on What’s Hot make you wonder about the physics of cat fall? Does the eye of a storm on the Weather Channel remind you of the Fibonacci sequence? If you’re like us, you too see the world with science (http://goo.gl/6USkK1). Share an image and tell us how it informs us on science, beyond the obvious. Join us in our occasional series of posts and share your unique science perspective of the world around you.
#ScienceMediaHype: Science is already sensational! We don’t need to hype it to the point of inaccuracy just for plusses and shares. Attention-grabbing headlines that bend the truth are dangerous because they mislead and misinform the public. They are also patronising because they assume that the public cannot understand science. Read here to learn why this is so important: http://goo.gl/lmZQcs
#DebunkingJunkScience: Tired of spurious arguments for a thoroughly debunked myth? Riled about unreasonable or sensational claims based on pseudoscience? While we don’t have flat earthers any more, there are still many controversial topics out there that are not supported by rigorous research. This is the place for posts that debunk poorly researched papers or false claims in the popular press.
Policy and Practice
Some of you may have a high quality post that doesn’t fit within our five broad categories (see Category-Specific Post section). For example, posts discussing open access, publication practices, cloud collaboration, mentoring, etc. are relevant to all disciplines. Please share your high quality, general posts to the Policy and Practice category.
Conferences/Job Ads/Communities
Please use this category to share information about scientific conferences, job ads, and science circles and communities here on G+.
Science Bytes (Memes, Cartoons, Images)
This is the category for fun posts on science cartoons (PhD comics, anyone?), memes and beautiful images of cosmological or microscopic proportions! Please follow these guidelines:
No more than ONE (yes, one) post per person per day. We’d like to see these in small doses.
Attribution is important. You must cite the original source whenever possible. We don’t condone ‘stealing’ pictures off the internet without acknowledging the photographer or artist.
If it is an image, tell us what it is and how it was acquired. Please make it both educational and interesting.
ETA
2 Nov 2015
Links to Google Drive are not allowed. Someone once posted a PDF of a whole text book via Google Drive which was a big copyright headache. Also, we don’t know what potential malware could be on Google Drive.
Science on Google+ 